Derivation of a dialog model from a task model by activity chain extraction

Abstract

Over the last few years, Model-Based User Interface Design has become an important tool for creating multi-device User Interfaces. By providing information about several aspects of the User Interface, such as the task for which it is being built, different User Interfaces can be generated for fulfilling the same needs although they have a different concrete appearance. In the process of making User Interfaces with a Model-Based Design approach, several models can be used: a task model, a dialog model, a user model, a data model,etc. Intuitively, using more models provides more (detailed) information and will create more appropriate User Interfaces. Nevertheless, the designer must take care to keep the different models consistent with respect to each other. This paper presents an algorithm to extract the dialog model (partially) from the task model. A task model and dialog model are closely related because the dialog model defines a sequence of user interactions, an activity chain, to reach the goal postulated in the task specification. We formalise the activity chain as a State Transition Network, and in addition this chain can be partially extracted out of the task specification. The designer benefits of this approach since the task and dialog model are consistent. This approach is useful in automatic User Interface generation where several different dialogs are involved: the transitions between dialogs can be handled smoothly without explicitely implementing them.