Quill: A Collaborative Design Assistant for Cross Platform Web Application User Interfaces

The majority of corporate websites are still not designed to work well on mobile devices. Some companies provide native apps, but these are expensive to develop. The problem is getting worse with new platforms such as tablets, TVs and cars. This talk presents work on an open source browser-based collaborative design assistant that simplifies the development of responsive web applications that work effectively on different platforms. This is based upon an expert system that dynamically updates the user interface design to reflect the developer’s decisions and ensure consistency across platforms. This is implemented in terms of constraint propagation and search through the design space. An additional benefit is the ease of providing accessible user interfaces in conjunction with assistive technologies.