Universal design of user interfaces attempts to cover design issues in multiple contexts of use where multiple types of users may carry out multiple tasks, possibly on multiple domains of interest. Existing design methods do not necessarily support designing such user interfaces. A new design method is presented for this purpose in three layers: (i) a conceptual layer where a domain expert defines an ontology of concepts, relationships, and attributes of the domain of discourse; (ii) a logical layer where a designer specifies multiple models based on the previously defined ontology; and (iii) a physical layer where a developer derives multiple user interfaces from the previously specified models with alternatives.

Universal design of user interfaces addresses design issues in multiple contexts of use where multiple types of users carry out multiple tasks, possibly in multiple domains of interest. Existing development methods do not necessarily support the development of such user interfaces, as they do not establish commonalities and differences between these multiple interfaces in different contexts of use. To address this need, a new development method is presented based on three levels of abstraction: (i) a conceptual level where a domain expert defines an ontology of concepts, relationships, and attributes of the domain of discourse, including user modelling; (ii) a logical level where a designer specifies multiple models based on the previously defined ontology and its rules; and (iii) a physical level where a developer develops multiple user interfaces from the previously specified models based on characteristics in the user models.