The talk will provide an outline of major model-driven engineering approaches to user interface design: we will cover data-driven approaches as well as task-driven ones, highlighting what are the key requirements for modern rich Internet applications, and why many of those approaches are suboptimal in terms of usability and design process.
The action-driven design approach will be then described, together with the basic design principles it rests upon. The UML-IDEA methodology will be introduced, which is based on using UML state machines and UML classes to provide the building blocks for automatically assembling widgets, data and control logic into an executable user interface. Several examples will be illustrated, and the equation Controller + Model = View will be discussed.
The overall claim will be that UML-IDEA supports a clear meaning for the term „interaction design“ whose operationalization should bring a number of advantages: rapid and flexible mix-fidelity prototyping, retargeting of the user interface, usability metrics and development of functional test cases.
Giorgio Brajnik is assistant professor in Computer Science at the University of Udine, Italy. His current interests are design, development and quality assessments of user interfaces, with an emphasis on accessibility, usability and user experience. In the past he worked on tools for testing accessibility, as well as information retrieval user interfaces and qualitative modeling of dynamical systems. He currently teaches „Usage centered design of web applications“ and „User experience“. He has been invited several times as visiting professor or panelist, and is member of many conference program committees as well as being a reviewer for different journals. In the past he served as scientific advisor for companies; in July 2012 he cofounded and is President of Interaction Design Solutions, a spin-off of the University of Udine that develops software for rapid prototyping and multiplatform deployment of user interfaces based on innovative model-based development practices. The company also provides consultancy services regarding usability and usage-centered design.
