Languages For Developing User Interfaces

This book brings together a number of researchers and developers from industry and academia who report on their work. It is of interest to language designers and the creators of toolkits, UIMSs, and other user interface tools.

Most programmers' fear of user interface (UI) programming comes from their fear of doing UI design. They think that UI design is like graphic design—the mysterious process by which creative, latte-drinking, all-black-wearing people produce cool-looking, artistic pieces. Most programmers see themselves as analytic, logical thinkers instead—strong at reasoning, weak on artistic judgment, and incapable of doing UI design. In this brilliantly readable book, author Joel Spolsky proposes simple, logical rules that can be applied without any artistic talent to improve any user interface, from traditional GUI applications to websites to consumer electronics. Spolsky's primary axiom, the importance of bringing the program model in line with the user model, is both rational and simple. In a fun and entertaining way, Spolky makes user interface design easy for programmers to grasp. After reading User Interface Design for Programmers, you'll know how to design interfaces with the user in mind. You'll learn the important principles that underlie all good UI design, and you'll learn how to perform usability testing that works.

"Developing User Interfaces" is targeted at the programmer who will actually implement, rather than design, the user-interface. Useful to programmers using any language--no particular windowing system or toolkit is presumed, examples are drawn from a variety of commercial systems, and code examples are presented in pseudo-code. The basic concepts of traditional computer graphics such as drawing and 3D modeling are covered for readers without a computer graphics background.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI), as the most prevailing type of User Interface (UI) in today's interactive applications, restricts the interaction with a computer to the visual modality and is therefore not suited for some users (e.g., with limited literacy or typing skills), in some circumstances (e.g., while moving around, with their hands or eyes busy) or when the environment is constrained (e.g., the keyboard and the mouse are not available). In order to go beyond the GUI constraints, the Multimodal (MM) UIs apear as paradigm that provide users with great expressive power, naturalness and flexibility. In this thesis we argue that developing MM UIs combining graphical and vocal modalities is an activity that could benefit from the application of a methodology which is composed of: a set of models, a method manipulating these models and the tools implementing the method. Therefore, we define a design space-based method that is supported by model-to-model colored transformations in order to obtain MM UIs of information systems. The design space is composed of explicitly defined design options that clarify the development process in a structured way in order to require less design effort. The feasability of the methodology is demonstrated through three case studies with different levels of complexity and coverage. In addition, an empirical study is conducted with end-users in order to measure the relative usability level provided by different design decisions.

Computer interfaces and documentation are notoriously difficult for any user, regardless of his or her level of experience. Advances in technology are not making applications more friendly. Introducing concepts from linguistics and language teaching, Language and Communication proposes a new approach to computer interface design. The book explains for the first time why the much hyped user-friendly interface is treated with such derision by the user community. The author argues that software and hardware designers should consider such fundamental language concepts as meaning, context, function, variety, and equivalence. She goes on to show how imagining an interface as a new language can be an invaluable design exercise, calling into question deeply held beliefs and assumptions about what users will or will not understand. Written for a wide range of computer scientists and professionals, and presuming no prior knowledge of language-related terminology, this volume is a key step in the on-going information revolution.

Computer-Aided Design of User Interfaces IV gathers the latest research of experts, research teams and leading organisations involved in computer-aided design of user interactive applications supported by software, with specific attention for platform-independent user interfaces and context-sensitive or aware applications. This includes: innovative model-based and agent-based approaches, code-generators, model editors, task animators, translators, checkers, advice-giving systems and systems for graphical and multimodal user interfaces. It also addresses User Interface Description Languages. This books attempts to emphasize the software tool support for designing user interfaces and their underlying languages and methods, beyond traditional development environments offered by the market. It will be of interest to software development practitioners and researchers whose work involves human-computer interaction, design of user interfaces, frameworks for computer-aided design, formal and semi-formal methods, web services and multimedia systems, interactive applications, and graphical user and multi-user interfaces.

Model-Driven Development (MDD) has become an important paradigm in software development. It uses models as primary artifacts in the development process. This book provides an outstanding overview as well as deep insights into the area of model-driven development of user interfaces, which is an emerging topic in the intersection of Human-Computer-Interaction and Software-Engineering. The idea of this book is based on the very successful workshop series of “Model-Driven Development of Advanced User Interfaces (MDDAUI)”. It has been written by the leading researchers and practitioners in the field of model-driven development of user interfaces and offer a variety of solutions and examples for • Architectures and environments for the generation of user interfaces • User interface development for specific domains and purposes • Model-driven development in the context of ambient intelligence • Concepts supporting model-driven development of user interfaces

User Interfaces for All is the first book dedicated to the issues of Universal Design and Universal Access in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Universal Design (or Design for All) is an inclusive and proactive approach seeking to accommodate diversity in the users and usage contexts of interactive products, applications, and services, starting from the design phase of the development life cycle. The ongoing paradigm shift toward a knowledge-intensive information society is already bringing about radical changes in the way people work and interact with each other and with information. The requirement for Universal Design stems from the growing impact of the fusion of the emerging technologies, and from the different dimensions of diversity, which are intrinsic to the information society. This book unfolds the various aspects of this ongoing evolution from a variety of viewpoints. It's a collection of 30 chapters written by leading international authorities, affiliated with academic, research, and industrial organizations, and non-market institutions. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the field, and includes contributions from a variety of theoretical and applied disciplines and research themes. This book can also be used for teaching purposes in HCI courses at the undergraduate as well as graduate level. Students will be introduced to the human-, organizational-, and technology-oriented dimensions that call for a departure from traditional approaches to user interface development. Students will also get an overview of novel methods, techniques, tools, and frameworks for the design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces that are universally accessible and usable by the broadest possible end-user population. This comprehensive book is targeted to a broad readership, including HCI researchers, user interface designers, computer scientists, software engineers, ergonomists and usability engineers, Human Factors researchers and practitioners, organizational psychologists, system/product designers, sociologists, policy- and decision makers, scientists in government, industry and education, as well as assistive technology and rehabilitation experts.