The Research Of Model-based High Usability User Interface Development

All kinds of new-type mobile devices are developed and appear on markets, and the diversity of devices brings many new challenges to the user interface developers. Firstly, how to effectively develop the user interface for the same application on different devices, so as to shorten the development cycle and reduce the development cost. Secondly, how to keep the consistency of the user interface among different devices, and make it have the unified user experience. Thirdly, how to improve the usability of user interfaces and make them easy to use. The current research on interface tool tries to use the model-based method so that the interface can be described in an abstract level at once, and then runs on different platforms through the model transformation, but due to the low usability of interface automatically generated, it isn’t widely applied in industry now. Therefore, how to improve the usability of the model-based user interface development becomes an urgent problem to be solved.User, device, and the environment where the device is used by the user in the mobile age are studied, then their characteristics and the effect on the design and development of the user interface are shown in the thesis. Based on the research of user interface usability, a model-based user interface development framework that supports high usability is put forward and a specific development process using the framework is built in the thesis. In order to integrate the designer’s experience into the model transformation process, the pattern-based model transformation method is introduced. Finally, a user interface development tool supporting the development process and the method proposed in this thesis is given. Specifically, this thesis focuses on the usability of user interface, and the innovative works mainly include:1. In theory, a framework of Model-Based High Usability User Interface Development (HU-MBUID) is proposed in this thesis and is composed of task space, knowledge space, and process space. The development process is abstracted into four levels which includes the tasks and domain model, Abstract User Interface (AUI), Concrete User Interface (CUI), and Final User Interface (FUI). The framework also makes the provision through the corresponding meta-model for each level. Besides, the multi-target user interface for different use of context is achieved in the specific process from the task model to the FUI. Using the framework can specifically define the concrete development methods applied to different areas, which is compatible with the various existing user model, platforms model, task model, etc. Consequently, it provides the basis for efficiently developing high quality user interface.2. On methodology, a specific HU-MBUID method using the HU-MBUID framework is proposed in the thesis. On the one hand, PCT theory can be applied in the task modeling, which can depict the user’s goals and tasks, on the other hand, user-interface description language is established. This language is suitable for the introduction of the usability features, and it can be used to the specified AUI models and CUI models. Users can also use the tools to assist developers to implement the model transformation and thus achieve semi-automated development of user interface. This method integrates user-centered design during task modeling stage, so that the user’s goals and the widespread interference in mobile environment can be well modeled, then users can model parts of usability features from the entry point of development, and maintain these usability features through patterns in the follow-up conversion process. In this process, users can integrate additional usability features into existing features to guarantee the usability of FUI generated by this method. In addition, the method also has good maintainability and reusability.3. Technically, a user interface design patterns based supplemented to the existing rule-based model transformation is introduced in the thesis. User interface designers summed up a variety of usability guidelines after long-term knowledge accumulation, and applied these guidelines to design the user interface with high usability. However, due to lacking of using experience by the designers, software tools can not automatically use these guidelines to develop the user interface. User interface design pattern bridges the gap between problems and solutions. It is difficult to find the needed patterns from a large number of UI patterns for designers or systems to support model transformation. Aiming at solving this problem, a pattern search and classification method based on keyword and concept lattice is presented in the thesis.4. The tools prototype supporting the HU-MBUID framework is also developed. This tool achieves the tasks modeling supporting perception control in the task space, and makes the modeling part usability during the task analysis, and supports the user interface design patterns in the knowledge space. During the process from high-level abstract model to the concrete model, this tool also models designer’s usability knowledge (usability principle and the design criteria) and the experience of using knowledge by the designer to maintain the usability characteristics. Besides, this tool combines the rule-based transformation with the user’s interactive modification in the process space to provide a (semi-)automatic model transformation method, and guarantee the development efficiency and flexibility.