Designing graphical interface programming languages for the end user

This thesis sets out to answer three simple questions: What tools are available for novice programmers to program GUIs? Are those tools fulfilling their role? Can anything be done to make better tools? Despite being simple questions, the answers are not so easily constructed. In answering the first question, it was necessary to examine the range of tools available and decide upon criteria which could be used to identify tools aimed specifically at the novice programmer (there being no currently agreed criteria for their identification). Having identified these tools, it was then necessary to construct a framework within which they could be sensibly compared. The answering of the second question required an investigation of what were the successful features of current tools and which features were less successful. Success or failure of given features was determined by research in both programming language design and studies of programmer satisfaction. Having discovered what should be retained and discarded from current systems, the answering of the third question required the construction of new systems through blending elements from visual languages, program editors and fourth generation languages. These final prototypes illustrate a new way of thinking about and constructing the next generation of GUI programming languages for the novice

Scalable User Interfaces for the Web / by Arman Danesh.

This thesis describes a new approach to developing and delivering user interfaces for Web applications. This approach, termed Scalable User Interfaces (SUI), is designed to allow a developer to create a single user interface definition for a Web application which can then be consumed, rendered and used by any device on the network. These devices can range from small displays such as mobile telephones to the full desktop-sized monitor displays used by personal computers. The goal of Scalable User Interfaces is to allow a single specification to be deployed on all devices without the need for the developer to specify any device-specific vocabularies, transformations, hinting or style sheets such as previous work in automated rendering for mixed displays and work in platform-independent user interface specification. Scalable User Interfaces provides a Flash-based implementation which highlights the utility of Flash as a tool for user interface design and research. Our work also illustrates the application of recursive rendering in laying out forms for various-sized displays

User Interface Abstraction for enabling TV set based Inclusive Access to the Information Society

199 p.The television (TV) set is present in most homes worldwide, and is the most used Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Despite its large implantation in the market, the interactive services consumption on TV set is limited. This thesis focuses on overcoming the following limiting factors: (i) limited Human Computer Interaction and (ii) lack of considering user’s real life context in the digital television (dTV) service integration strategy. Making interactive services accessible to TV set’s large user base, and especially to the most vulnerable ones, is understood as the path to integrate the mankind with the information society. This thesis explores the use of user interface abstraction technologies to reach the introduced goals. The main contributions of this thesis are: (i) an approach to enable the universally accessible remote control of the TV set, (ii) an approach for the provision of universally accessible interactive services through TV sets, and (iii) an approach for the provision of universally accessible services in the TV user’s real life context. We have implemented the contributing approaches for different use cases, and we have evaluated them with real users, achieving good results