User Interface Modeling in UMLi

Modeling user interfaces is a well-established discipline in its own right. For example, modeling techniques can describe interaction objects, 5 tasks, 6 and lower-level dialogs in user interfaces. 7 For more than 10 years, researchers have tried to build comprehensive interface development environments that integrate models for describing a user interface's different aspects. Many research projects have addressed model-based user interface development environments (MB-UIDEs) 8 to provide specialized models for describing user interfaces. These models often include facilities that produce interfaces that can run from declarative descriptions of their behavior. 9 Using models as part of user interface development can help capture user requirements, avoid premature commitment to specific layouts and widgets, and make the relationships between an interface's different parts and their roles explicit. Although MB-UIDEs provide models that effectively capture user interface functionality, most proposals provide limited facilities for modeling user interfaces along with an applica-tion's other aspects. For example, most MB-UIDEs have a domain model that describes the data over which the interface acts but provide limited facilities for describing the functionality of the application for which the interface is being constructed. Thus, MB-UIDEs are weak in application modeling, an area of specialization for UML. By using a modeling environment in which application and interface designers describe models in terms of an integrated set of A lthough user interfaces represent an essential part of software systems, the Unified Modeling Language seems to have been developed with little specific attention given to user interface issues. You can use standard UML to model important aspects of user interfaces, 1 but this often results in unwieldy and unnatural representations. 2–4