COMET(s), a software architecture style and an interactors toolkit for plastic User Interfaces

Abstract

Plasticity of User Interfaces (UIs) refers to the ability of UIs to withstand variations of context of use (<User, Platform, Environment>) while preserving usability. This paper presents COMET, a software architecture style for building task-based plastic interactors. COMET bridges the gap between two main approaches in plasticity: model-driven engineering and interactors toolkits. Interactors that are compliant to the COMET style are called COMETs. These COMETs are multi-rendering multi-technological interactors (WIMP and post-WIMP, Web and non Web as well as vocal). COMETs are extensible and controllable by the user (up until now the designer, in the future the end-user). The COMET architecture and the use of COMETs are illustrated on an executable prototype: a slide viewer called CamNote++.