Previous research has proposed guidelines for creating domain-specific languages for modeling human-machine multimodal dialogs. One of these guidelines suggests the use of multiple levels of abstraction so that the descriptions of multimodal events can be separated from the human-machine dialog model. In line with this guideline, we implemented Hasselt, a domain-specific language that combines textual and visual models, each of them aiming at describing different aspects of the intended dialog system. We conducted a user study to measure whether the proposed language provides benefits over equivalent event-callback code. During the user study participants had to modify the Hasselt models and the equivalent C# code. The completion times obtained for C# were on average shorter, although the difference was not statiscally significant. Subjective responses were collected using standardized questionnaires and an interview, which both indicated that participants saw value in the proposed models. We provide possible explanations for the results and discuss some lessons learned regarding the design of the empirical study.

Read more →

Storyboarding is a technique that is often used for the conception of new interactive systems. A storyboard illustrates graphically how a system is used by its users and what a typical context of usage is. Although the informal notation of a storyboard stimulates creativity, and makes them easy to understand for everyone, it is more difficult to integrate in further steps in the engineering process. We present an approach, "Time In Storyboards" (Timisto), to extract valuable information on how various interactions with the system are positioned in time with respect to each other. Timisto does not interfere with the creative process of storyboarding, but maximizes the structured information about time that can be deduced from a storyboard.

Read more →

Activity-Based Computing (ABC) has been proposed as an organisational structure for local desktop management and knowledge work. Knowledge work, however, typically occurs in partially overlapping subgroups and involves the use of multiple devices. We introduce co-Activity Manager, an ABC approach that (i) supports activity sharing for multiple collaborative contexts, (ii) includes collaborative tools into the activity abstraction and (iii) supports multiple devices by seamlessly integrated cloud support for documents and activity storage. Our 14 day field deployment in a multidisciplinary software development team showed that activity sharing is used as a starting point for long-term collaboration while integrated communication tools and cloud support are used extensively during the collaborative activities. The study also showed that activities are used in different ways ranging from project descriptions to to-do lists, thereby confirming that a document-driven activity roaming model seems to be a good match for collaborative knowledge work.

Read more →

Model-driven development of user interfaces has become increasingly powerful in recent years. Unfortunately, model-driven approaches have the inherent limitation that they cannot handle the informal nature of some of the artifacts used in truly multidisciplinary user interface development such as storyboards, sketches, scenarios and personas. In this chapter, we present an approach and tool support for multidisciplinary user interface development bridging informal and formal artifacts in the design and development process. Key features of the approach are the usage of annotated storyboards, which can be connected to other models through an underlying meta-model, and cross-toolkit design support based on an abstract user interface model.

Read more →