User interface management systems

From the Publisher:
There are a number of ongoing problems with the design of Interactive Systems, due mainly to the inherent complexity of these systems (which are generally reactive, parallel and user-driven) and to the number of people - including designers, ergonomists, and computer scientists - involved. This volume examines the proposition that formal methods are one of the conceptual tools that can support the design of Interactive Systems, understanding of their behaviour, and reasoning about their properties. All the approaches considered take into account some aspect of the Web environment which is one of the most successful software products of recent years: millions of people use it every day in order to search for, exchange, and modify information. As the case study in this volume, it provides a familiar background against which problems can be discussed. In Formal Methods in Human-Computer Interaction some of the most well-known approaches developed in research laboratories and universities in different countries are presented, thus providing a comprehensive review of the state of the art in the field. It will be of particular interest to academic/industrial researchers and MSc students in the fields of human-computer interaction, software engineering, formal methods, and computer science in general. It will also be suitable for human-computer interaction engineers who are either carrying out research or tackling industrial problems.

Formal Methods in Human-Computer Interaction

The purpose of ARINC 661 specification [1] is to define interfaces to a Cockpit Display System (CDS) used in any types of aircraft installations. ARINC 661 provides precise information for communication protocol between application (called User Applications) and user interface components (called widgets) as well as precise information about the widgets themselves. However, in ARINC 661, no information is given about the behaviour of these widgets and about the behaviour of an application made up of a set of such widgets. This paper presents the results of the application of a formal description technique to the various elements of ARINC 661 specification within an industrial project. This formal description technique called Interactive Cooperative Objects defines in a precise and non-ambiguous way all the elements of ARINC 661 specification. The application of the formal description techniques is shown on an interactive application called MPIA (Multi Purpose Interactive Application). Within this application, we present how ICO are used for describing interactive widgets, User Applications and User Interface servers (in charge of interaction techniques). The emphasis is put on the model-based management of the feel of the applications allowing rapid prototyping of the external presentation and the interaction techniques. Lastly, we present the CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) tool supporting the formal description technique and its new extensions in order to deal with large scale applications as the ones targeted at by ARINC 661 specification.

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Model-based engineering of widgets, user applications and servers compliant with ARINC 661 specification

Reuse of large-grain software components offers the potential for significant savings in application development cost and time. Successful reuse of components and component substitutability depend both on the qualities of the components reused as well as the software context in which the reuse is attempted. Disciplined approaches to the structure and design of software applications offer the potential of providing a hospitable setting for such reuse. The authors present the results of a series of exercises designed to determine how well ‘off-the-shelf’ constraint solvers could be reused in applications designed in accordance with the C2 software architectural style. The exercises involved the reuse of SkyBlue and Amulet's one-way formula constraint solver. The authors constructed numerous variations of a single application, i.e. an application family. The paper summarises the style and presents the results from the exercises. The exercises were successful in a variety of dimensions; one conclusion is that the C2 style offers significant potential for the development of application families.

Exploiting architectural style to develop a family of applications

This paper explores the formal specification of the physical behaviour of devices ‘unplugged’ from their digital effects. By doing this we seek to better understand the nature of physical interaction and the way this can be exploited to improve the design of hybrid devices with both physical and digital features. We use modified state transition networks of the physical behaviour, which we call physiograms, and link these to parallel diagrams of the digital state. These are used to describe a number of features of physical interaction exposed by previous work and relevant properties expressed using a formal semantics of the diagrams. As well as being an analytic tool, the physigrams have been used in a case study where product designers used and adapted them as part of the design process.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00534919/document

Physigrams: modelling devices for natural interaction

1 Subgroup Reports.- Report on Role, Model, Structure and Construction of a UIMS.- Report on Dialogue Specification Tools.- Report on the Interface of the UIMS to the Application.- Report on the User's Conceptual Model.- 2 Role, Model, Stmcture and Constmction of a UIMS.- Issues Pertaining to the Design of a User Interface Management System.- Components of Interactive Applications.- Communication Mediator - A Structure for UIMS.- Some Issues in Future User Interface Management System (UlMS) Development.- Architecture for A User Interface Management System.- 3 Dialogue Specification Tools.- Design Notations and User Interface Management Systems.- Parallel Input and Feedback in Dialogue Cells.- Presentational, Syntactic and Semantic Components of Interactive Dialogue Specifications.- 4 Interfaces and Implementations of UIMS.- DIMS as Part of a CAD System.- The Unification ofa Dialogue Manager and a Graphics System.- The Flexible Configuration of Interaction Environments using GKS and Workspaces.- Recent Experiences with Input Handling at PMA.- Some Thoughts on the Interface Between User Interface Management Systems and Application Software.- 5 User's Conceptual Model.- The Role of a User's System Model, and its Relevance to User Interface Management.- A Model of a User's Conceptual Model of...

G. Pfaff

Papers

User interface management systems : proceedings of the Workshop on User Interface Management Systems, held in Seeheim, FRG, November 1-3, 1983