Engineering adaptive user interfaces for enterprise applications

The user interface (UI) layer is considered an important component in software applications since it links the users to the software’s functionality. Enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems have very complex UIs that are used by users with diverse needs in terms of the required features and layout preferences. The inability to cater for the variety of user needs diminishes the usability of these applications. One way to cater for those needs is through adaptive UIs. Some enterprise software providers offer mechanisms for tailoring UIs based on the variable user needs, yet those are not generic enough to be used with other applications and require maintaining multiple UI copies manually. A generic platform based on a model-driven approach could be more reusable since operating on the model level makes it technology independent. The main objective of this research is devising a generic, scalable, and extensible platform for building adaptive enterprise application UIs based on a runtime model-driven approach. This platform primarily targets UI simplification, which we defined as a mechanism for increasing usability through adaptive behavior by providing users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout based on the context-of-use. This paper provides an overview of the research questions and methodology, the results that were achieved so far, and the remaining work

Cedar Studio: an IDE supporting adaptive model-driven user interfaces for enterprise applications

Support tools are necessary for the adoption of model-driven engineering of adaptive user interfaces (UI). Enterprise applications in particular, require a tool that could be used by developers as well as I.T. personnel during all the development and post-development phases. An IDE that supports adaptive model-driven enterprise UIs could further promote the adoption of this approach. This paper describes Cedar Studio, our IDE for building adaptive model-driven UIs based on the CEDAR reference architecture for adaptive UIs. This IDE provides visual design and code editing tools for UI models and adaptive behavior. It is evaluated conceptually using a set of criteria from the literature and applied practically by devising example adaptive enterprise user interfaces

Engineering Adaptive Model-Driven User Interfaces for Enterprise Applications

Enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning systems have numerous complex user interfaces (UIs). Usability problems plague these UIs because they are offered as a generic off-the-shelf solution to end-users with diverse needs in terms of their required features and layout preferences. Adaptive UIs can help in improving usability by tailoring the features and layout based on the context-of-use. The model-driven UI development approach offers the possibility of applying different types of adaptations on the various UI levels of abstraction. This approach forms the basis for many works researching the development of adaptive UIs. Yet, several gaps were identified in the state-of-the-art adaptive model-driven UI development systems. To fill these gaps, this thesis presents an approach that offers the following novel contributions: - The Cedar Architecture serves as a reference for developing adaptive model-driven enterprise application user interfaces. - Role-Based User Interface Simplification (RBUIS) is a mechanism for improving usability through adaptive behavior, by providing end-users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout based on the context-of-use. - Cedar Studio is an integrated development environment, which provides tool support for building adaptive model-driven enterprise application UIs using RBUIS based on the Cedar Architecture. The contributions were evaluated from the technical and human perspectives. Several metrics were established and applied to measure the technical characteristics of the proposed approach after integrating it into an open-source enterprise application. Additional insights about the approach were obtained through the opinions of industry experts and data from real-life projects. Usability studies showed the approach’s ability to significantly improve usability in terms of end-user efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction

RBUIS: simplifying enterprise application user interfaces through engineering role-based adaptive behavior

Enterprise applications such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) are very large scale, encompassing millions of lines-of-code and thousands of user interfaces (UI). These applications have to be sold as feature-bloated off-the-shelf products to be used by people with diverse needs in required feature-set and layout preferences based on aspects such as skills, culture, etc. Although several approaches have been proposed for adapting UIs to various contexts-of-use, little work has focused on simplifying enterprise application UIs through engineering adaptive behavior. We define UI simplification as a mechanism for increasing usability through adaptive behavior by providing users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout based on the context-of-use. In this paper we present Role-Based UI Simplification (RBUIS), a tool supported approach based on our CEDAR architecture for simplifying enterprise application UIs through engineering role-based adaptive behavior. RBUIS is integrated in our general-purpose platform for developing adaptive model-driven enterprise UIs. Our approach is validated from the technical and end-user perspectives by applying it to developing a prototype enterprise application and user-testing the outcome

Towards an aspect weaving BPEL engine

This position paper proposes the use of dynamic aspects and the visitor design pattern to obtain a highly configurable and extensible BPEL engine. Using these two techniques, the core of this infrastructural software can be customised to meet new requirements and add features such as debugging, execution monitoring, or changing to another Web Service selection policy. Additionally, it can easily be extended to cope with customer-specific BPEL extensions. We propose the use of dynamic aspects not only on the engine itself but also on the workflow in order to tackle the problems of Web Service hot deployment and hot fixes to long running processes. In this way, composing aWeb Service "on-the-fly" means weaving its choreography interface into the workflow

Architectural implications for context adaptive smart spaces

Buildings and spaces are complex entities containing complex social structures and interactions. A smart space is a composite of the users that inhabit it, the IT infrastructure that supports it, and the sensors and appliances that service it. Rather than separating the IT from the buildings and from the appliances that inhabit them and treating them as separate systems, pervasive computing combines them and allows them to interact. We outline a reactive context architecture that supports this vision of integrated smart spaces and explore some implications for building large-scale pervasive systems