USer Interface eXtensible Markup Language (USIXML) consists of a User Interface Description Language (UIDL) allowing designers to apply a multi-path development of user interfaces. In this development paradigm, a user interface can be specified and produced at and from different, and possibly multiple, levels of abstraction while maintaining the mappings between these levels if required. Thus, the development process can be initiated from any level of abstraction and proceed towards obtaining one or many final user interfaces for various contexts of use at other levels of abstraction. In this way, the model-to-model transformation which is the cornerstone of Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) can be supported in multiple configurations, based on composition of three basic transformation types: abstraction, reification, and translation.

presentation model APM Provides a conceptual description of the structure and behaviour of the visual parts of the user interface. There the UI is described in terms abstract objects.

User interfaces (UIs) are essential components of most software systems, and significantly a#ect the e#ectiveness of installed applications. In addition, UIs often represent a significant proportion of the code delivered by a development activity. However, despite this, there are no modelling languages and tools that support contract elaboration between UI developers and application developers. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been widely accepted by application developers, but not so much by UI designers. For this reason, this paper introduces the notation of the Unified Modelling Language for Interactive Applications (UMLi), that extends UML, to provide greater support for UI design. UI elements elicited in use cases and their scenarios can be used during the design of activities and UI presentations. A diagram notation for modelling user interface presentations is introduced. Activity diagram notation is extended to describe collaboration between interaction and domain objects. Further, a case study using UMLi notation and method is presented.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a natural candidate for user interface (UI) modelling since it is the standard notation for object oriented modelling of applications. However, it is by no means clear how to model UIs using UML. This paper presents a user interface modelling case study using UML. This case study identifies some aspects of UIs that cannot be modelled using UML notation, and a set of UML constructors that may be used to model UIs. The modelling problems indicate some weaknesses of UML for modelling UIs, while the constructors exploited indicate some strengths. The identification of such strengths and weaknesses can be used in the formulation of a strategy for extending UML to provide greater support for user interface design.

The mapping problem has been defined as any method aimed at mapping models capturing various aspects of an interactive system throughout their development life cycle to support model-based design of user interfaces. This field has followed a long tradition of establishing models and maintaining mappings between them so as to create and maintain accurate specifications of a user interface. In this paper, potential mappings between models are defined so as to create a uniform and integrated framework of adding, removing, and modifying mappings throughout the development life cycle of interactive systems. The mappings can be established from any source model to any target model, one or many, in the same formalism, or from any model element to any other. Those models include task, domain, presentation, dialog, and context of use. The context of use is itself decomposed into user, platform, and environment. To support the manipulation of mappings between models, two examples of supporting software are detailed. TRANSFORMIXML consists of a Java application that triggers transformations of models expressed by graph grammars. IDEALXML consists of a Java application allowing the designer to edit any model at any time, and element of any model and to establish a set of mappings. Both software are based on UsiXML, a

Abstract Model-based user interface development environments aim to provide designers with a more systematic approach to user interface development using a particular design method. This method is realised through tools which support the construction and linkage of the supported models. This paper presents the tools which support the construction of the Teallach models in the context of the Teallach design method. Distinctive features of the Teallach tool include comprehensive facilities for relating the different models, and the provision of a flexible design method in which models can be constructed and related by designers in different orders and in different ways. 1.

There is growing interest in augmented reality (AR) as technologies are developed that enable ever smoother integration of computer capabilities into the physical objects that populate the everyday lives of users. However, despite this growing importance of AR technologies, there is little tool support for the design of AR systems. In this paper, we present two notations, ASUR and UMLi, that can be used to capture design-significant features of AR systems. ASUR is a notation for designing user interactions in AR environments. UMLi is a notation for designing the user interfaces to interactive systems. We use each notation to specify the design of an augmented museum gallery. We then compare the two notations in terms of the types of support they provide and consider how they might be used together.

The mapping problem has been defined as the way to map models involved throughout the development life cycle of user interfaces. Model-based design of user interfaces has followed a long tradition of establishing models and maintaining mappings between them. This paper introduces a formal definition of potential mappings between models with its corresponding syntax so as to create a uniform and integrated framework for adding, removing, and modifying mappings throughout the development life cycle. For the first time, the mappings can be established from any source model to any target model, one or many, in the same formalism. Those models include task, domain, presentation, dialog, and context of use, which is itself decomposed into user, platform, and environment. IDEALXML consists of a Java application allowing the designer to edit any model at any time, and any element of any model, but also to establish a set of mappings, either manually or automatically based on a mapping model.

In this paper, we describe the COMETs Inspector, a software tool providing user interface designers and developers with a semantic network in order to control the plasticity of their User Interfaces (UI) at run-time. Thanks to a set of predefined relationships, the semantic network links together various concepts ranging from the final UI (i.e., the UI described in terms of technological spaces) to the concrete and abstract UIs (i.e., the UI respectively described in terms of concrete interaction objects independently of any technological space, and abstract individual components and containers independently of any interaction modality) up to the tasks and concepts of the interactive system. In this way, plasticity can be addressed at four levels of abstraction (task and concepts, abstract, concrete, and final user interface) for forward, reverse, and lateral engineering. The end user exploits the semantic network at run time to adapt his/her UI to another context of use by identifying, selecting, and applying plasticity suitable operations.

The beautification of a user interface resulting from model-to-model and model-to-code transformations in Model-Driven Architecture consists of performing manual changes to address user requirements which have not been supported during the transformations. These requirements may include customization, users’ preferences, and compliance with corporate style guidelines. This paper introduces a beautification process into a user-interface model. This process includes a series of beautification operations based on a formal definition, as well as a constrained editor that enables designers to apply these beautification operations on a user interface. All manual changes done using these beautification operations are transformed into model-to-model transformations, thus reducing the problem of round-trip engineering. The paper also demonstrates that this process significantly reduces the number of manual changes performed on user interfaces of information systems, while preserving the quality properties induced by the transformations.