Monica Gemo**, Jean Vanderdonckt*, Murielle Florins*, Benoit Macq**
Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
*Institut d'Administration et de Gestion - **Labo. de Télécommunications
Vanderdonckt@isys.ucl.ac.be
Florins@isys.ucl.ac.be
Macq@tele.ucl.ac.be
Position Paper
for the W3C Workshop on Delivery Context
Abstract
The goal of the SALAMANDRE project [1] is to devise and implement a set of
techniques that will aid UI designers who are working in the domain of mobile
computing. These techniques [2] will allow designers to build UIs across several platforms, while
respecting the unique constraints posed by each platform. As W3C Composite
Capabilities Preferences Profile (CC/PP) Protocol [3] seems to be the most promising Device Independence supporting
technology [4],
we want to investigate how it can be exploited to produce multiple UIs for
different context of use from a task model and more generally from Model-based
tools[5].
Motivation
Mobile computing poses a series of unique challenges
for user interface design and development: user interfaces must now run on many
different computing platforms, ranging from the powerful workstation to the
tiny cellular phone. Accordingly they must accommodate the capabilities of
various access devices and be suitable for different context of use, while
preserving consistency and usability.
To meet these challenges, the most frequent adopted
practice consists in developing unique Uis for each case. This poses further
problems. Foremost is the unnecessary repetition involved in implementing a UI
again and again, for each platform and usage case. In addition a consistent UI
design must be implemented across several platforms, even though many different
designers will likely implement that design, each with unique skills,
experiences, and preferences. Revisions to the proposed design must be
implemented multiple times, and the introduction of a new device requires a
re-implementation of the UI.
Clearly, current practices of UI design for mobile
computers need significant improvement. User-interface modeling involves the
creation of knowledge bases that describe various components of the user
interface, such as the presentation, the dialog, the platform, the task
structure, and the context. These knowledge bases can be further exploited to
automatically produce a usable UI matching the requirements of each context of
use. This can be accomplished by applying a set of model-based techniques to
abstract, platform-neutral user interface descriptions and creating mappings
between the various UI model components.
The goal of the SALAMANDRE project is to investigate
on such techniques by designing and implementing a design-time or run-time
modulator which will intelligently transform a given interface from one context
to another, thus giving birth to multiple user interfaces
simultaneously. The context is hereby defined as any set of contextual
parameters that may influence the utility and/or the usability of a user
interface accessed by a user population. This context may include parameters
describing the user, the computing platform, the network, the available
interaction resources, the environment etc. At present the best way for a web
service application, such as our modulator would be, to learn about some of
these parameters, i.e. the ones pertaining to the user preferences and the
access mechanism capabilities, is to get them from a CC/PP delivery context
profile, as CC/PP protocol developed by W3C seems the to be the most promising Device
Independence enabling technology. Further investigations will be undertaken to
devise the role of CC/PP profiles in constraining the UI components mappings.
References