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.

Domain-oriented design environments are cooperative problem-solving systems that support designers in complex design tasks. In this paper we present the facilities and architecture of Argo, a domain-oriented design environment for software architecture. Argo’s architecture is motivated by the desire to achieve reuse and extensibility of the design environment. It separates domain-neutral code from domain-oriented code, which is distributed among intelligent design materials as opposed to being centralized in the design environment. Argo’s facilities are motivated by the observed cognitive needs of designers. These facilities extend previous work in design environments to support reflection-in-action, opportunistic design, and comprehension and problem-solving. Keywords: Domain-oriented design environments, critics, software architectures, architectural styles, humancomputer interaction, human cognitive skills.

We live in a world characterized by evolution -- that is, by ongoing processes of development, formation, and growth in both natural and human-created systems. Biology tells us that complex, natural systems are not created all at once but must instead evolve over time. We are becoming increasingly aware that evolutionary processes are ubiquitous and critical for technological innovations as well. This is particularly true for complex software systems because these systems do not necessarily exist in a technological context alone but instead are embedded within dynamic human organizations. The Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L 3 D) at the University of Colorado has been involved in research on software design and other design domains for more than a decade. We understand software design as an evolutionary process in which system requirements and functionality are determined through an iterative process of collaboration among multiple stakeholders, rather than being completel...

Self-directed learning is a continuous engagement in acquiring, applying and creating knowledge and skills in the context of an individual learner’s unique problems. Effectively supporting self-directed learning is one of the critical challenges in supporting lifelong learning. Self-directed learning creates new challenging requirements for learning technologies. Domainoriented design environments address these challenges by allowing learners to engage in their own problems, by providing contextualized support, and by exploiting breakdowns as opportunities for learning. Economies of educational knowledge constitute an emerging concept in which communities contribute toward the creation of information repositories, which can be reused and evolved by all members of the community for the creation of new environments. We argue and demonstrate that domain-oriented design environments can serve as models for these economies, that a software reuse perspective provides us with insights into the challenges these developments face, and that the creation and evolution of these economies are best understood as problems in self-directed learning. Keywords: Self-directed learning; lifelong learning; domain-oriented design environments; economy of educational knowledge; reuse; seeding, evolutionary growth, reseeding Demonstrations: A demonstration of the WebNet system described in this article can be found at

A fundamental objective of human-computer interaction research is to make systems more usable, more useful, and to provide users with experiences fitting their specific background knowledge and objectives. The challenge in an information-rich world is not only to make information available to people at any time, at any place, and in any form, but specifically to say the right thing at the right time in the right way. Designers of collaborative humancomputer systems face the formidable task of writing software for millions of users (at design time) while making it work as if it were designed for each individual user (only known at use time). User modeling research has attempted to address these issues. In this article, I will first review the objectives, progress, and unfulfilled hopes that have occurred over the last ten years, and illustrate them with some interesting computational environments and their underlying conceptual frameworks. A special emphasis is given to high-functionali...

Design critiquing systems are a type of intelligent user interface used to support human designers in decision making. This paper places design critics in the larger context of intelligent user interface approaches and surveys several critiquing systems. Each approach and system is evaluated with respect to a five-phase design improvement process. This paper concludes with a summary of the state of the art in critiquing systems and recommendations for future research directions. 1.

Abstract. Sketching activities are widely adopted during early design phases of user interface development to convey informal specifications of the interface presentation and dialog. Designers or even end users can sketch some or all of the future interface they want. With the ever increasing availability of different computing platforms, a need arises to continuously support sketching across these platforms with their various programming languages, interface development environments and operating systems. To address needs along these dimensions, which pose new challenges to user interface sketching tools, SketchiXML is a multi-platform multi-agent interactive application that enable designers and end users to sketch user interfaces with different levels of details and support for different contexts of use. The results of the sketching are then analyzed to produce interface specifications independently of any context, including user and platform. These specifications are exploited to progressively produce one or several interfaces, for one or many users, platforms, and environments. 1

Software architectures are high-level design representations of software systems that focus on composition of software components and how those components interact. Software architectures abstract the details of implementation and allow the designer to focus on essential design decisions. Regardless of notation, designers are faced with the task of making good design decisions that demand a broad range of knowledge of the problem and solution domains. In this paper we describe Argo, a software architecture design environment that supports designers by addressing several cognitive challenges of design. Argo’s critiquing infrastructure supports decision making by automatically supplying knowledge that is timely and relevant to decisions at hand. Our discussion centers on a fivephase critiquing process that we use to motivate Argo’s features, structure a usage scenario, and characterize related work. Keywords: Domain-oriented design environments, software architecture, human cognitive needs, design critics 1.

. The long and winding road of user modeling is grounded in different epistemological assumptions exploring different dimensions of the problem. User-modeling research has explored different domains, identified important distinctions underlying different approaches within user modeling research, and created a number of challenging research problems. These issues are explored in the context of high-functionality applications and how our research over the last ten years has addressed the problems of making high-functionality applications more usable, more useful, and more learnable with a variety of different user modeling approaches. 1. Introduction User modeling is one of a number of research areas that intuitively seem to be winning propositions and worthwhile investments based on their obvious need and potential payoff. One area comparable to user modeling is software reuse. The approaches seem to be appealing, natural, theoretically justifiable, desirable, and needed (e.g.,...

. The process of acquiring knowledge cannot be separated from the process of applying it. Integrating working and learning is not a desirable luxury -- it is a fundamental requirement for businesses to remain competitive. In this article we describe the ENRICH approach to supporting organisational learning. The enrichment of workproducts with context is aided by suite of web based tools which integrate HTML documents, discussion threads and knowledge models. The approach is described using one of the three ENRICH industrial case studies - the British Aerospace Team Workbook. 1. INTRODUCTION "Businesses spend up to $100 billion each year to train workers. Yet estimates are that less than 10% of this training transfers to the job. So business wastes $90 billion each year...." [Review on US training effectiveness (Detterman 1993)] Current theories of learning reveal why this is so: the process of acquiring knowledge cannot be separated from the process of applying it. Integra...