Query-By-Object Interface for Information Requirement Elicitation in M-Commerce

Abstract

Information Requirement Elicitation (IRE) is essential in wireless Web service to elicit information requirements through interactive choice prompts. This article presents a design of a high-level user interface for IRE, in the context of banking database queries by a mobile Web user. The prototype is based on the notion of a Query-By-Object approach of building a query using multiple user-level steps. The test prototype system uses the Mobile Information Devices Profile of the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition, for a wireless front end, and a Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition, application server and an Object-Relational Database Management System at the back end. An empirical study conducted on the prototype has demonstrated that the proposed user interface is intuitive and simple to use. The proposed interface aims to eliminate ambiguities in users' communication by virtue of a step-by-step procedure. The main contributions of this interface are its simplicity to express a query and its expressive power.