Declarative interface models for user interface construction tools: the Mastermind approach

Abstract

Currently, building a user interface involves creating a large procedural program. Model-based programming provides an alternative new paradigm. In the model-based paradigm, developers create a declarative model that describes the tasks that users are expected to accomplish with a system, the functional capabilities of a system, the style and requirements of the interface, the characteristics and preferences of the users, and the I/O techniques supported by the delivery platform. Based on the model, a much smaller procedural program then determines the behavior of the system.There are several advantages to this approach. The declarative model is a common representation that tools can reason about, enabling the construction of tools that automate various aspects of interface design, that assist system builders in the creation of the model, that automatically provide context sensitive help and other run-time assistance to users. The common model also allows the tools that operate on it to cooperate. Because all components of the system share the knowledge in the model, this promotes interface consistency within and across systems and reusability in the construction of new interfaces. The declarative nature of the model allows system builders to more easily understand and extend systems.This paper describes the modeling language of MASTERMIND, a model-based user interface development environment.KeywordsModel-based interfacesknowledge-based interface toolsUIMSuser interface design environments