Pierre A. Akiki

Adaptive Model-Driven User Interface Development Systems

Adaptive user interfaces (UIs) were introduced to address some of the usability problems that plague many software applications. Model-driven engineering formed the basis for most of the systems targeting the development of such UIs. An overview of these systems is presented and a set of criteria is established to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of the state of the art, which is categorized under architectures, techniques, and tools. A summary of the evaluation is presented in tables that visually illustrate the fulfillment of each criterion by each system. The evaluation identified several gaps in the existing art and highlighted the areas of promising improvement.

RBUIS: simplifying enterprise application user interfaces through engineering role-based adaptive behavior

Enterprise applications such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) are very large scale, encompassing millions of lines-of-code and thousands of user interfaces (UI). These applications have to be sold as feature-bloated off-the-shelf products to be used by people with diverse needs in required feature-set and layout preferences based on aspects such as skills, culture, etc. Although several approaches have been proposed for adapting UIs to various contexts-of-use, little work has focused on simplifying enterprise application UIs through engineering adaptive behavior. We define UI simplification as a mechanism for increasing usability through adaptive behavior by providing users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout based on the context-of-use. In this paper we present Role-Based UI Simplification (RBUIS), a tool supported approach based on our CEDAR architecture for simplifying enterprise application UIs through engineering role-based adaptive behavior. RBUIS is integrated in our general-purpose platform for developing adaptive model-driven enterprise UIs. Our approach is validated from the technical and end-user perspectives by applying it to developing a prototype enterprise application and user-testing the outcome.

Integrating adaptive user interface capabilities in enterprise applications

Many existing enterprise applications are at a mature stage in their development and are unable to easily benefit from the usability gains offered by adaptive user interfaces (UIs). Therefore, a method is needed for integrating adaptive UI capabilities into these systems without incurring a high cost or significantly disrupting the way they function. This paper presents a method for integrating adaptive UI behavior in enterprise applications based on CEDAR, a model-driven, service-oriented, and tool-supported architecture for devising adaptive enterprise application UIs. The proposed integration method is evaluated with a case study, which includes establishing and applying technical metrics to measure several of the method’s properties using the open-source enterprise application OFBiz as a test-case. The generality and flexibility of the integration method are also evaluated based on an interview and discussions with practitioners about their real-life projects.

Cedar studio: an IDE supporting adaptive model-driven user interfaces for enterprise applications

Support tools are necessary for the adoption of model-driven engineering of adaptive user interfaces (UI). Enterprise applications in particular, require a tool that could be used by developers as well as I.T. personnel during all the development and post-development phases. An IDE that supports adaptive model-driven enterprise UIs could further promote the adoption of this approach. This paper describes Cedar Studio, our IDE for building adaptive model-driven UIs based on the CEDAR reference architecture for adaptive UIs. This IDE provides visual design and code editing tools for UI models and adaptive behavior. It is evaluated conceptually using a set of criteria from the literature and applied practically by devising example adaptive enterprise user interfaces.

Crowdsourcing user interface adaptations for minimizing the bloat in enterprise applications

Bloated software systems encompass a large number of features resulting in an increase in visual complexity. Enterprise applications are a common example of such types of systems. Since many users only use a distinct subset of the available features, providing a mechanism to tailor user interfaces according to each users needs helps in decreasing the bloat thereby reducing the visual complexity. Crowdsourcing can be a means for speeding up the adaptation process by engaging and leveraging the enterprise application communities. This paper presents a tool supported model-driven mechanism for crowdsourcing user interface adaptations. We evaluate our proposed mechanism and tool through a basic preliminary user study.

Engineering Adaptive Model-Driven User Interfaces

Software applications that are very large-scale, can encompass hundreds of complex user interfaces (UIs). Such applications are commonly sold as feature-bloated off-the-shelf products to be used by people with variable needs in the required features and layout preferences. Although many UI adaptation approaches were proposed, several gaps and limitations including: extensibility and integration in legacy systems, still need to be addressed in the state-of-the-art adaptive UI development systems. This paper presents Role-Based UI Simplification (RBUIS) as a mechanism for increasing usability through adaptive behavior by providing end-users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout, based on the context-of-use. RBUIS uses an interpreted runtime model-driven approach based on the Cedar Architecture, and is supported by the integrated development environment (IDE), Cedar Studio. RBUIS was evaluated by integrating it into OFBiz, an open-source ERP system. The integration method was assessed and measured by establishing and applying technical metrics. Afterwards, a usability study was carried out to evaluate whether UIs simplified with RBUIS show an improvement over their initial counterparts. This study leveraged questionnaires, checking task completion times and output quality, and eye-tracking. The results showed that UIs simplified with RBUIS significantly improve end-user efficiency, effectiveness, and perceived usability.

Engineering adaptive user interfaces for enterprise applications

The user interface (UI) layer is considered an important component in software applications since it links the users to the softwares functionality. Enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems have very complex UIs that are used by users with diverse needs in terms of the required features and layout preferences. The inability to cater for the variety of user needs diminishes the usability of these applications. One way to cater for those needs is through adaptive UIs. Some enterprise software providers offer mechanisms for tailoring UIs based on the variable user needs, yet those are not generic enough to be used with other applications and require maintaining multiple UI copies manually. A generic platform based on a model-driven approach could be more reusable since operating on the model level makes it technology independent. The main objective of this research is devising a generic, scalable, and extensible platform for building adaptive enterprise application UIs based on a runtime model-driven approach. This platform primarily targets UI simplification, which we defined as a mechanism for increasing usability through adaptive behavior by providing users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout based on the context-of-use. This paper provides an overview of the research questions and methodology, the results that were achieved so far, and the remaining work.

CHAIN: Developing model-driven contextual help for adaptive user interfaces

Abstract Adaptive user interfaces (UIs) change their presentation at runtime to remain usable in different contexts-of-use. Such changes can cause discrepancies between the UI and static help materials, e.g., videos and screenshots, thereby negatively impacting the latters usefulness (usability and utility). This paper presents Contextual Help for Adaptive INterfaces (CHAIN), which is an approach for developing model-driven contextual help that maintains its usefulness across UI adaptations. This trait is achieved by interpreting the help models at runtime and overlaying instructions on the running adapted UI. A language called Contextual Help for Adaptive INterfaces eXtensible Markup Language (CHAINXML) and a visual notation were developed for expressing and depicting help models. A technique was also devised for presenting CHAIN help models over legacy applications, whether or not their source-code is available. A supporting tool was developed as an extension to Cedar Studio. This work was empirically evaluated in two studies. The first study performed a preliminary evaluation of CHAINs visual notation. The second study evaluated CHAINs strengths and shortcomings after using it to develop help for real-life adaptive UIs. The results gave a positive indication about CHAINs technical qualities and provided insights that could inform future work.

Visual Simple Transformations: Empowering End-Users to Wire Internet of Things Objects

Empowering end-users to wire Internet of Things (IoT) objects (things and services) together would allow them to more easily conceive and realize interesting IoT solutions. A challenge lies in devising a simple end-user development approach to support the specification of transformations, which can bridge the mismatch in the data being exchanged among IoT objects. To tackle this challenge, we present Visual Simple Transformations (ViSiT) as an approach that allows end-users to use a jigsaw puzzle metaphor for specifying transformations that are automatically converted into underlying executable workflows. ViSiT is explained by presenting meta-models and an architecture for implementing a system of connected IoT objects. A tool is provided for supporting end-users in visually developing and testing transformations. Another tool is also provided for allowing software developers to modify, if they wish, a transformations underlying implementation. This work was evaluated from a technical perspective by developing transformations and measuring ViSiTs efficiency and scalability and by constructing an example application to show ViSiTs practicality. A study was conducted to evaluate this work from an end-user perspective, and its results showed positive indications of perceived usability, learnability, and the ability to conceive real-life scenarios for ViSiT.