ISML: an interface specification meta-language

In this paper we present an abstract metaphor model situated within a model-based user interface framework. The inclusion of metaphors in graphical user interfaces is a well established, but mostly craft-based strategy to design. A substantial body of notations and tools can be found within the model-based user interface design literature, however an explicit treatment of metaphor and its mappings to other design views has yet to be addressed. We introduce the Interface Specification Meta-Language (ISML) framework and demonstrate its use in comparing the semantic and syntactic features of an interactive system. Challenges facing this research are outlined and further work proposed

Using formal models to design user interfaces a case study

The use of formal models for user interface design can provide a number of benefits. It can help to ensure consistency across designs for multiple platforms, prove properties such as reachability and completeness and, perhaps most importantly, can help incorporate the user interface design process into a larger, formally-based, software development process. Often, descriptions of such models and examples are presented in isolation from real-world practice in order to focus on particular benefits, small focused examples or the general methodology. This paper presents a case study of developing the user interface to a new software application using a particular pair of formal models, presentation models and presentation interaction models. The aim of this study was to practically apply the use of formal models to the design process of a UI for a new software application. We wanted to determine how easy it would be to integrate such models into our usual development process and to find out what the benefits, and difficulties, of using such models were. We will show how we used the formal models within a user-centred design process, discuss what effect they had on this process and explain what benefits we perceived from their use

A Newcomer's Guide to EICS, the Engineering Interactive Computing Systems Community

[EN] Welcome to EICS, the Engineering Interactive Computing Systems community, PACMHCI/EICS journal, and annual conference! In this short article, we introduce newcomers to the field and to our community with an overview of what EICS is and how it positions with respect to other venues in Human-Computer Interaction, such as CHI, UIST, and IUI, highlighting its legacy and paying homage to past scientific events from which EICS emerged. We also take this opportunity to enumerate and exemplify scientific contributions to the field of Engineering Interactive Computing Systems, which we hope to guide researchers and practitioners towards making their future PACMHCI/EICS submissions successful and impactful in the EICS community.We acknowledge the support of MetaDev2 as the main sponsor of EICS 2019. We would like to thank the Chairs of all the tracks of the EICS 2019 conference, the members of the local organization team, and the web master of the EICS 2019 web site. EICS 2019 could not have been possible without the commitment of the Programme Committee members and external reviewers. This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, State Research Agency / European Regional Development Fund under Vi-SMARt (TIN2016-79100-R), the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha European Regional Development Fund under NeUX (SBPLY/17/180501/000192) projects, the Generalitat Valenciana through project GISPRO (PROMETEO/2018/176), and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through project DataME (TIN2016-80811-P).López-Jaquero, VM.; Vatavu, R.; Panach, JI.; Pastor López, O.; Vanderdonckt, J. (2019). A Newcomer's Guide to EICS, the Engineering Interactive Computing Systems Community. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 3:1-9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3300960S193Bastide, R., Palanque, P., & Roth, J. (Eds.). (2005). Engineering Human Computer Interaction and Interactive Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. doi:10.1007/b136790Beaudouin-Lafon, M. (2004). Designing interaction, not interfaces. Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - AVI ’04. doi:10.1145/989863.989865Bodart, F., & Vanderdonckt, J. (Eds.). (1996). Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems ’96. Eurographics. doi:10.1007/978-3-7091-7491-3Gallud, J. A., Tesoriero, R., Vanderdonckt, J., Lozano, M., Penichet, V., & Botella, F. (2011). Distributed user interfaces. Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA ’11. doi:10.1145/1979742.1979576Graham, T. C. N., & Palanque, P. (Eds.). (2008). Interactive Systems. Design, Specification, and Verification. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-70569-7Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems - EICS ’09. (2009). doi:10.1145/1570433Lawson, J.-Y. L., Vanderdonckt, J., & Vatavu, R.-D. (2018). Mass-Computer Interaction for Thousands of Users and Beyond. Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/3170427.3188465Lozano, M. D., Galllud, J. A., Tesoriero, R., Penichet, V. M. R., Vanderdonckt, J., & Fardoun, H. (2013). 3rd workshop on distributed user interfaces. Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems - EICS ’13. doi:10.1145/2494603.2483222Proceedings of the 2014 Workshop on Distributed User Interfaces and Multimodal Interaction - DUI ’14. (2014). doi:10.1145/2677356Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems. (2019). doi:10.1145/3319499Tesoriero, R., Lozano, M., Vanderdonckt, J., Gallud, J. A., & Penichet, V. M. R. (2012). distributed user interfaces. CHI ’12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/2212776.2212704Vanderdonckt, J. (2005). A MDA-Compliant Environment for Developing User Interfaces of Information Systems. Active Flow and Combustion Control 2018, 16-31. doi:10.1007/11431855_2Vatavu, R.-D. (2012). User-defined gestures for free-hand TV control. Proceedings of the 10th European conference on Interactive tv and video - EuroiTV ’12. doi:10.1145/2325616.2325626Vatavu, R.-D. (2017). Beyond Features for Recognition: Human-Readable Measures to Understand Users’ Whole-Body Gesture Performance. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 33(9), 713-730. doi:10.1080/10447318.2017.1278897Wobbrock, J. O., & Kientz, J. A. (2016). Research contributions in human-computer interaction. Interactions, 23(3), 38-44. doi:10.1145/290706

Task Flow Modeling in Electronic Business Environments

In recent years, internet based commerce has developed as a new paradigm. Many factors such as "at home delivery", easy ordering, and usually lower prices contributed to the success of the e-commerce. However, more recently, companies realized that one of the major factors in having a successful internet based business is the design of a user interface that is in concordance with the users' expectations, which includes both functionality and user friendly features. The func-tionality feature of an e-business interface is one of the most important elements when discussing about a specific internet based business. In our paper, we present methods to model task flows for e-business interfaces. We strengthen our study with the design modeling of a practical scenario that may appear in an on-line commercial environment.task flow, e-business, hierarchical model, user interface, human-computer interaction

Using formal methods in safety-critical interactive system design : from architecture-based approaches to tool-based development

10p.International audienceAlthough formal methods are increasingly used by researchers in HCI, their usage in actual interactive developments has not been put in practice. In this article, we describe our experience with a specific formal method -the B method- from two viewpoints. On the one hand, we demonstrate how it is possible to use formal methods on real development, from specification to actual code. Our case study concerns a real-time functional core. Doing so, we notice that some HCI concepts, such as architecture models, may have to be adapted or recreated. On the other hand, we show how it is possible to make formal methods easier to use by the way of a complete integration into HCI tools. We conclude in eliciting the lessons learned from this experience

CanonSketch and TaskSketch: innovative modeling tools for usage-centered design

Two experimental tools to support usage-centered design using essential use cases and canonical abstract prototypes are described. The models and methods of usage-centered design are outlined and the new tools are described briefly.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Is my configuration any good: checking usability in an interactive sensor-based activity monitor

We investigate formal analysis of two aspects of usability in a deployed interactive, configurable and context-aware system: an event-driven, sensor-based homecare activity monitor system. The system was not designed from formal requirements or specification: we model the system as it is in the context of an agile development process. Our aim was to determine if formal modelling and analysis can contribute to improving usability, and if so, which style of modelling is most suitable. The purpose of the analysis is to inform configurers about how to interact with the system, so the system is more usable for participants, and to guide future developments. We consider redundancies in configuration rules defined by carers and participants and the interaction modality of the output messages.Two approaches to modelling are considered: a deep embedding in which devices, sensors and rules are represented explicitly by data structures in the modelling language and non-determinism is employed to model all possible device and sensor states, and a shallow embedding in which the rules and device and sensor states are represented directly in propositional logic. The former requires a conventional machine and a model-checker for analysis, whereas the latter is implemented using a SAT solver directly on the activity monitor hardware. We draw conclusions about the role of formal models and reasoning in deployed systems and the need for clear semantics and ontologies for interaction modalities

The Design and evaluation of the specification framework for user interface design

This thesis presentsthe design and evaluation of an interface specification meta-language(ISML) that has been developed to explicitly support metaphor abstractions in a model-based, user interface design framework. The application of metaphor to user interface design is widely accepted within the HCI community, yet despite this, there exists relatively little formal support for user interface design practitioners. With the increasing range and power of user interface technologies made widely available comes the opportunity for the designof sophisticated, new forms of interactive environments. The inter-disciplinary nature of HCI offers many approaches to user interface design that include views on tasks, presentationand dialogue architectures and various domain models. Notations and tools that support these views vary equally, ranging from craft-based approachesthrough to computational or tool- based support and formal methods. Work in these areas depicts gradual cohesion of a number of these design views, but do not currently explicitly specify the application of metaphorical concepts in graphical user interface design. Towards addressing this omission, ISML was developed based on (and extending) some existing model- based user interface design concepts. Abstractions of metaphor and other interface design views are captured in the ISML framework using the extensible mark-up language(XML). A six-month case study, developing the `Urban Shout Cast' application is used to evaluate ISML. Two groups of four software engineers developed a networked, multi-user, virtual radio-broadcasting environment. A qualitative analysis examines both how each group developed metaphor designs within the ISML framework and also their perceptions of its utility and practicality. Subsequent analysis on the specification data from both groups reveals aspects of the project's design that ISML captured and those that were missed. Finally, the extent to which ISML can currently abstract the metaphors used in the case study is assessed through the development of a unified `meta-object' model. The results of the case study show that ISML is capable of expressing many of the features of each group's metaphor design, as well as highlighting important design considerations during development. Furthermore, it has been shown, in principle, how an underlying metaphor abstraction can be mapped to two different implementations. Evaluation of the case study also includes important design lessons: ISML metaphor models can be both very large and difficult to separate from other design views, some of which are either weakly expressed or unsupported. This suggests that the appropriate mappings between design abstractions cannot always be easily anticipated, and that understanding the use of model-based specifications in user interface design projects remains a challenge to the HCI community

Investigation, Development, and Evaluation of Performance Proving for Fault-tolerant Computers

A number of methodologies for verifying systems and computer based tools that assist users in verifying their systems were developed. These tools were applied to verify in part the SIFT ultrareliable aircraft computer. Topics covered included: STP theorem prover; design verification of SIFT; high level language code verification; assembly language level verification; numerical algorithm verification; verification of flight control programs; and verification of hardware logic