DocumentCode :
1263097
Title :
A graphical environment for user-interface design and development
Author :
DeSoi, John ; Lease, Mark ; Lively, William ; Sheppard, Sallie ; Slade, Tom
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX, USA
Volume :
5
Issue :
5
fYear :
1990
fDate :
9/1/1990 12:00:00 AM
Firstpage :
289
Lastpage :
299
Abstract :
The design of an easy-to-use and flexible user-interface management system (UIMS) is described. The authors identify two major problems for UIMSs. The first problem is to find a way to make the UIMS easier to use without sacrificing important functionality. A design concept, behaviour abstraction, is described which allows important gains in ease-of-use, while retaining the kind of flexibility needed by user-interface designers. The second problem is to provide a user-interface design tool that allows easy and flexible runtime configuration. A traditional notation, the data-flow diagram, proves to be an appropriate organising principle for the design of the runtime connection between a user-interface module and application modules. An implementation, called the graphical specification system (GSS), provides an integrated environment for designing the user-interface component of interactive embedded system software. GSS provides two tools; an application display generator (ADG) for designing screen objects and a data-flow editor (DFE) for specifying runtime connections. GSS demonstrates the smooth integration of a drawing environment for display design and a data-flow editor for runtime specification. The results provide a platform for future work in extending the behaviour abstraction concept and for building in usability engineering tools
Keywords :
computer graphics; flowcharting; formal specification; interactive systems; programming environments; user interfaces; ADG; DFE; GSS; UIMS; application display generator; application modules; behaviour abstraction; behaviour abstraction concept; data-flow diagram; data-flow editor; design concept; drawing environment; ease-of-use; flexibility; flexible runtime configuration; flexible user-interface management system; future work; graphical specification system; integrated environment; interactive embedded system software; organising principle; runtime connection; screen objects; traditional notation; usability engineering tools; user-interface design tool; user-interface designers; user-interface module;
fLanguage :
English
Journal_Title :
Software Engineering Journal
Publisher :
iet
ISSN :
0268-6961
Type :
jour
Filename :
62659
Link To Document :
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