Towards Fully Declarative High-Level Interaction Models: An Approach Facilitating Automated GUI Generation

Models of high-level interaction design are usually based on procedural representation. For knowledge representation and reasoning, however, declarative representations are preferred. In this paper, we define purely declarative high-level interaction models based on theories of human communication. In contrast, earlier attempts to define purely declarative models resulted for pragmatic reasons in a mixed representation including procedural constructs within the overall declarative model structure. We show how the declarative models can be operationalized into behavioral (abstract) UI models corresponding to those generated from the mixed representation. Based on an implementation integrated with an existing framework for GUI generation, we show that and how it is possible to automatically generate GUIs from purely declarative models as well.