Abstract
User Interfaces (UI) design is a complex and multi-faceted problem, owing to the ever increasing variability of the design options and the interaction context (devices, user profiles, and their environment). Moreover, UI design choices stand on users’ needs elicitation, which are difficult to evaluate precisely upfront and require iterative design cycles based on trial and error. All this complex variability should be managed efficiently to ensure moderate design costs. In this article, we propose a variability management approach integrated into a UI rapid prototyping process, which involves the combination of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) and Software Product Lines. Our approach supports the separation of concerns through multi-step partial configuration of UI features, enabling each stakeholder of the UI design process to define the variability on the assets she manages. We have implemented this approach in our existing MDE UI generation Framework.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
External features refer to features coming from another partial configuration.
- 3.
This example is supported by the Neo4J tutorial: Movie DB, www.neo4j.com.
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Here, we focus on a widget but other factors are to be adjusted by the interface designer like style, layout, etc.
- 5.
We designed the transformation FMs in accordance to the transformations themselves.
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Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by the FNR CORE Project MoDEL C12/IS/3977071 and AFR grant agreement 7859308.
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Sottet, JS., Vagner, A., Frey, A.G. (2015). Model Transformation Configuration and Variability Management for User Interface Design. In: Desfray, P., Filipe, J., Hammoudi, S., Pires, L. (eds) Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development. MODELSWARD 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 580. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27869-8_23
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