GAIML: A New Language for Verbal and Graphical Interaction in Chatbots

Natural and intuitive interaction between users and complex systems is a crucial research topic in human-computer interaction. A major direction is the definition and implementation of systems with natural language understanding capabilities. The interaction in natural language is often performed by means of systems called chatbots. A chatbot is a conversational agent with a proper knowledge base able to interact with users. Chatbots appearance can be very sophisticated with 3D avatars and speech processing modules. However the interaction between the system and the user is only performed through textual areas for inputs and replies. An interaction able to add to natural language also graphical widgets could be more effective. On the other side, a graphical interaction involving also the natural language can increase the comfort of the user instead of using only graphical widgets. In many applications multi-modal communication must be preferred when the user and the system have a tight and complex interaction. Typical examples are cultural heritages applications (intelligent museum guides, picture browsing) or systems providing the user with integrated information taken from different and heterogenous sources as in the case of the iGoogle™ interface. We propose to mix the two modalities (verbal and graphical) to build systems with a reconfigurable interface, which is able to change with respect to the particular application context. The result of this proposal is the Graphical Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (GAIML) an extension of AIML allowing merging both interaction modalities. In this context a suitable chatbot system called Graphbot is presented to support this language. With this language is possible to define personalized interface patterns that are the most suitable ones in relation to the data types exchanged between the user and the system according to the context of the dialogue

Dynamically generated multi-modal application interfaces

This work introduces a new UIMS (User Interface Management System), which aims to solve numerous problems in the field of user-interface development arising from hard-coded use of user interface toolkits. The presented solution is a concrete system architecture based on the abstract ARCH model consisting of an interface abstraction-layer, a dialog definition language called GIML (Generalized Interface Markup Language) and pluggable interface rendering modules. These components form an interface toolkit called GITK (Generalized Interface ToolKit). With the aid of GITK (Generalized Interface ToolKit) one can build an application, without explicitly creating a concrete end-user interface. At runtime GITK can create these interfaces as needed from the abstract specification and run them. Thereby GITK is equipping one application with many interfaces, even kinds of interfaces that did not exist when the application was written. It should be noted that this work will concentrate on providing the base infrastructure for adaptive/adaptable system, and does not aim to deliver a complete solution. This work shows that the proposed solution is a fundamental concept needed to create interfaces for everyone, which can be used everywhere and at any time. This text further discusses the impact of such technology for users and on the various aspects of software systems and their development. The targeted main audience of this work are software developers or people with strong interest in software development

Automatic generation of user interfaces from rigorous domain and use case models

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Development of an Internet-Based Chronic Disease Self-Management System

Patient self-management programs and information systems that support them can improve the quality of healthcare. Flaws in user experience reduce the willingness of patients to adopt such systems. To explore how emerging technology such as rich Internet applications can be used to address the usability issues of personal health information systems, we developed a health self-management application that is based on an open-source framework. In this work we present the architecture of the system, discuss the issues we faced and lessons we learned while developing it. This work can help researchers and practitioners in evaluating approaches towards developing new generation of personal health solutions. Furthermore, this work serves as a basis for implementing a feature-rich system that can improve chronic disease self-management

Deriving Configuration Interfaces from Feature Models : A Vision Paper

International audienceIn software product lines, feature models are the de-facto standard for representing variability as well as for configuring products. Yet, configuration relying on feature models faces two issues: i) it assumes knowledge of the underlying formalism, which may not be true for end users and ii) it does not take advantage of advanced user-interface controls, leading to usability and integration problems with other parts of the user interface. To address these issues, our research focuses on the generation of configuration interfaces based on variability models, both from the visual and behavioral perspectives. We tackle visual issues by generating abstract user-interfaces from feature models. Regarding configuration behavior, in particular the configuration sequence, we plan to use feature configuration workflows, variability-aware models that exhibit similar characteristics as of task, user, discourse and business models found in the in the human-computer interaction community. This paper discusses the main challenges and possible solutions to realize our vision

Software Licenses in Context: The Challenge of Heterogeneously-Licensed Systems

The prevailing approach to free/open source software and licenses has been that each system is developed, distributed, and used under the terms of a single license. But it is increasingly common for information systems and other software to be composed with components from a variety of sources, and with a diversity of licenses. This may result in possible license conflicts and organizational liability for failure to fulfill license obligations. Research and practice to date have not kept up with this sea-change in software licensing arising from free/open source software development. System consumers and users consequently rely on ad hoc heuristics (or costly legal advice) to determine which license rights and obligations are in effect, often with less than optimal results; consulting services are offered to identify unknowing unauthorized use of licensed software in information systems; and researchers have shown how the choice of a (single) specific license for a product affects project success and system adoption. Legal scholars have examined how pairs of software licenses conflict but only in simple contexts. We present an approach for understanding and modeling software licenses, as well as for analyzing conflicts among groups of licenses in realistic system contexts, and for guiding the acquisition, integration, or development of systems with free/open source components in such an environment. This work is based on an empirical analysis of representative software licenses and of heterogeneously-licensed systems. Our approach provides guidance for achieving a “best-of-breed” component strategy while obtaining desired license rights in exchange for acceptable obligations

Modellbasierte Generierung von Benutzungsoberflächen

Die Arbeit stellt einen integrierten Gesamtprozess zur modellgetriebenen Softwareentwicklung von Benutzungsschnittstellen und Geschäftslogik vor. Dazu notwendige und unterstützende Deklarationsmodelle, sowie Modelltransformationen für dieses Verfahren, werden entwickelt und präsentiert. Weiterhin werden Meta-Modelle für Aufbau und Wartung eines HCI-Patternkatalogs vorgestellt und zur Erstellung eines solchen Kataloges benutzt. Die darin enthaltenen Einträge werden in Bezug auf Ihre softwaretechnische Komponentisierbarkeit untersucht und klassifiziert.The thesis presents an integrated model-driven approach for developing software. This approach supports the generation of user interfaces, as well as artifacts of business logic. Suitable meta models and model transformations are developed and explained. Secondly, this thesis dwells on the topic of HCI patterns. It is researched how such patterns may be classified, componentized and made use of in a model-driven process. This work eventually yields a pattern language, whose entries are declared using state-of-the-art model-driven technologies