Multiple User Interfaces: Towards a Task-Driven and Patterns-Oriented Design Model (original) (raw)

Multi-devices “Multiple” user interfaces: development models and research opportunities

Journal of Systems and Software, 2004

Today, Internet-based appliances can allow a user to interact with the server-side services and information using different kinds of computing platforms including traditional office desktops, palmtops, as well as a large variety of wireless devices including mobile telephones, Personal Digital Assistants, and Pocket Computers. This technological context imposes new challenges in user interface software engineering, as it must run on different computing platforms accommodating the capabilities of various devices and the different contexts of use. Challenges are triggered also because of the universal access requirements for a diversity of users. The existing approaches of designing a single user interface using one computing platform do not adequately address the challenges of diversity, cross-platform consistency, universal accessibility and integration. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a new integrative framework for modeling, designing and evaluating multi-device user interfaces for the emerging generation of interactive systems. This paper begins by describing a set of constraints and characteristics intrinsic to multi-device user interfaces, and then by examining the impacts of these constraints on the specification, design and validation processes. Then, it discusses the research opportunities in important topics relevant to multi-device user interface development, including task and model-based, pattern-driven and device-independent development. We will highlight how research in these topics can contribute to the emergence of an integrative framework for Multiple-User Interface design and validation.

A Layered Approach for Designing Multiple User Interfaces from Task and Domain Models

2003

Abstract More frequently, design of user interfaces covers design issues related to multiple contexts of use where multiple stereotypes of users may carry out multiple tasks, possibly on multiple domains of interest. Existing development methods do not necessarily support developing such user interfaces as they do not factor out common parts between similar cases while putting aside uncommon parts that are specific to some user stereotypes.

Concepts and issues in interfaces for multiple users and multiple devices

2004

In this paper, we identify and discuss several groups of issues that arise in the design of interfaces for multiple users interacting with multiple devices. We analyze in what ways these interfaces differ from traditional single-user single device interfaces, and identify different characteristics of interfaces. We categorize a possible set of device types that may exist in an environment, and then discuss the fundamental issues that have to be addressed when designing multi-user multi-device interfaces.

Constraint Adaptability of Multi-Device User Interfaces

2006

Methods to support the creation of multi-device user inter- faces typically use some type of abstraction of the user in- terface design. To retrieve the final user interface from the abstraction a transformation will be applied that specializes the abstraction for a particular target platform. The User Interface Markup Language (UIML) offers a way to create multi-device user interface descriptions

A Novel Design Approach for Multi-device Adaptable User Interfaces: Concepts, Methods and Examples

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2011

User interface designers and engineers are faced today with unprecedented challenges. Applications are progressively required to run on multiple computing platforms and accommodate the capabilities of different devices. Users and context are significantly characterized by diversity, leading to a very broad range of accessibility and interaction requirements and preferences that need to be adequately addressed. The current approach of designing separate user interfaces, one for each target use, is time consuming, error prone, and does not adequately addresses the challenges of cross-platform consistency, universal access and integration. To this end, this paper proposes a new integrative approach to multi-device user interface development for achieving deviceindependence by-design and further pursuing improved levels user experience for all through adaptive presentational models for various devices and contexts of use. Explanatory examples that were implemented in the context of the REMOTE R&D project are also presented.

An environment for developing adaptive, multi-device user interfaces

2003

There is a growing demand for the development of multi-device, adaptive user interfaces-interfaces that will run on and adapt to the characteristics of multiple display devices and networks as well as multiple users and user tasks. We describe a design and implementation environment for the development of such interfaces. This tool allows developers to specify their desired interfaces using an abstract set of screen element and layout constructs. It then generates a Java Server Page implementation using a custom tag library that realises a multi-device, adaptive interface. We compare and contrast our approach to other techniques and describe our experiences using it. .

Task models and interaction models in a multiple user interfaces generation process

2004

In a Multiple User Interfaces (MUI) context, several models must be defined and adapted (tasks, user, domain…). Abstract models are progressively enriched in concrete models using pattern libraries and filtering processes. In this paper, we define the central role of the interaction model in MUI design and specification. This model manages the interaction between the user and the application, and ensures the link between task models, abstract interfaces and the functional core of the application. In our approach, we use AMF, a multi-agent and multi-facet architecture, to define the interaction model. We describe the structure and behavior of an AMF-based interactive system that provides multiple user interfaces.

An "intent-oriented" approach for Multi-Device User Interface Design

2006

A large number of heterogeneous and computing devices, such as PCs, PDAs, and cell phones, nowadays are used to access the same information. Currently, designers designing such multi-device user interfaces have to design a UI separately for each device, which is a time consuming and error prone activity. This paper discusses our approach to the multi-device interface development. In particular we describe how abstract UI descriptions and task model management systems can be combined to develop adaptive UIs for a wide range of devices. The designed software framework allows to generate the concrete user interface at runtime, by adapting it to the client's execution environment. As shown in the example application, three different environments have been the target of our implementation work: standard PCs, PDAs and mobile phones equipped with Java Micro Edition.