FlexiXML : a portable user interface rendering engine for UsiXML

A considerable amount of effort in software development is dedicated to the user interaction layer.Given the complexity inherent to the development of this layer, it is important to be able to analyse the concepts and ideas being used in the development of a given user interface. This analysis should be performed as early as possible. Model- based user interface development provides a solution to this problem by providing developers with tools that enable both modeling, and reasoning about, user interfaces at different levels of abstraction. Of particular interest here, is the possibility of animating the models to generate actual user interfaces. This paper describes FlexiXML, a tool that performs the rendering and animation of user interfaces described in the UsiXML modeling language

A Methodological Framework for Multi-Fidelity Sketching of User Interfaces

Designing the right User Interface (UI) of an Information System the first time is very unlikely to occur. Instead, UI design is recognized as a process that remains intrinsically open, iterative, and incomplete. Most designers consider hand sketches on paper as one of the most effective means to represent the first drafts of a future UI. This kind of unconstrained approach presents many advantages: sketches can be drawn at any time, it is fast to learn and quick to produce, it lets the sketcher focus on basic structural issues instead of unimportant details, and it encourages creativity. The idea of developing a computer-based tool for sketching UIs naturally emerged from these observations. Such a tool would extend the advantages provided by sketching techniques by: easy creating, deleting, updating or moving of UI elements, thus encouraging typical activities in the design process such as exploratory design, checking and revision. In this thesis, we introduce SketchiXML, a multi-platform interactive application that enable designers and end users to sketch user interfaces with different levels of fidelity and support for different contexts of use. The results of the sketching are analyzed to produce interface specifications independently of any context. These specifications are exploited to progressively produce one or several interfaces, for several contexts of use. Moreover, this tool is integrated in a complete prototyping solution that can provide effective support to most software development methodologies.(PhD in Management Sciences, option "Information Systems") -- UCL, 200