PhD thesis,
Model and framework for multimodal and adaptive user interfaces generation in the context of business processes development
Universita Degli Studi Firenze, (2015)
Abstract
This thesis addresses issues related to the automatic generation of user
interfaces, in order to identify methods to effectively support the constant
evolution of processes and, at the same time, to put the emphasis on fun-
damental concepts for the user such as usability, plasticity, adaptability and
multi-modality. The proposed methodology foresees the definition of a set
of four meta-models for the design of the various aspects of both the UI
and the application development processes, with the definition of the dif-
ferent users involved in the different steps and the indication of the models
produced at the end of each step of the process; said methodology is synthe-
sized in a specific framework covering both the design and runtime phases of
multimodal adaptive UIs and application life cycles, thus embracing a more
holistic model-driven approach foreseeing the integration of methods for the
automatic generation of user interfaces with the tools used for business pro-
cess management. In particular the framework envisions: a Domain Model,
to represent all the concepts characterizing each application domain; a Pro-
cess Model, to represent the tasks fulfilling the application requirements; an
Abstract User Interface Model, automatically generated from the two previ-
ously introduced models and describing any possible user interface generated
for the specific use case; a Concrete User Interface Model, automatically gen-
erated from the abstract model and describing the family of concrete user
interfaces for a specific use case once a particular target technology has been
chosen.
