History, Results, and Bibliography of the User Interface Design Environment (UIDE), an Early Model-based System for User Interface Design and Implementation

Abstract

UIDE, the User Interface Design Environment, was conceived in 1987 as a next-generation user interface design and implementation tool to embed application semantics into the earlier generation of User Interface Management Systems (UIMSs), which focused more on the look and feel of an interface. UIDE models an application’s data objects, actions, and attributes, and the pre- and post- conditions associated with the actions. The model is then used for a variety of design-time and run-time services, such as to: automatically create windows, menus, and control panels; critique the design for consistency and completeness; control execution of the application; enable and disable menu items and other controls and make windows visible and invisible; generate context-sensitive animated help, in which a mouse moves on the screen to show the user how to accomplish a task; generate text help explaining why commands are disabled and what must be done to enable them; and support a set of transformations on the model which change certain user interface characteristics in a correctness-preserving way.