Generating Multiple User Interfaces for Multiple Application Domains

This Ph.D. dissertation presents a classification scheme for User Interface Development Environments (UIDEs) based on the multiplicity of user interfaces and application domains that can be supported. The SISD, SIMD and MISD [S= Single, I= user Interface(s), M= Multiple, D= application Domain(s)] generator classes encompass most of the UIDEs described in the literature. A major goal of this research is to allow any user to develop a personalized interface for any interactive application, that is, the development of an MIMD UIDE. Fundamental to the development of such a UIDE is the complete separation of the user interface component from the application component. This separation necessitates devising less tightly coupled models of the application and user interface than have been reported to date. The main features of the MIMD UIDE model are as follows. [1] Interactive applications are modeled as editors providing a set of functions that manipulate 2-dimensional graphical objects. [2] Interactive data structures are introduced for maintaining and manipulating both the internal and external representation(s) of application information as a single unit. These external representations form the basis for presenting internal information to the user. [3] Since interaction with the user must be the sole responsibility of the user interface component, function interaction is modeled as follows. Application functions are modeled as a set of services. Each service processes a (set of) parameter(s) independently. For each service in the application, a corresponding service Interface object is defined in the user interface component. The service interface object interacts with the user to specify the required (set of) parameter(s), calls the associated service within the application, and displays the result of the service to the user. Using the above model, the user interface component is modeled to allow personalized specifications at all levels; including the internal entities of the interactive system, the characteristics of the display of information, and the interaction tasks, techniques and devices used for parameter specification