Lecture 14:Model-based tools:

Creating the UI Automatically

Brad Myers

05-830Advanced User Interface Software

1© 2013 - Brad Myers

Schedule of Lectures

Everyone OK? See also instructions off the homeworks page Right away: Check to make sure there are 2-

3 articles for each person

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Model-Based Tools

Overview Programmer describes the operation of the

system or the user interface in a specification language = the "model". model is a high-level description usually declarative (listing parts and relationships)

System automatically creates the interface Uses a low-level toolkit for the widgets

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Goals: High-level description of an interface is easier to write than low-level

toolkit code Automatic generation may produce better UIs than programmers Allow separation of UI design (embodied in rules) from UI contents

(supplied by the programmer) Support dynamic creation of objects

define templates or prototypes Increase re-use since design rules shared by multiple applications Tools can reason over the specification to produce extra stuff:

Automatic generation of help, undo, etc. Transform interface into different but functionally equivalent interface Enabling and disabling of widgets Enforcement or checking of design guidelines- consistency,

completeness Enforces consistency since rules will pick similar objects for similar situations

Automatic adjustment to different screen sizes, etc., since rules can take this into account

Automatic analysis for quality NGOMSL analysis : GLEAN (Kieras, UIST'95)

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Overview, cont. Related to the "Declarative" approach discussed

in previous lecture but here system has some intelligence or knowledge

so less has to be specified by the programmer. Different types:

Dialog box creators: Mickey, DON, Jade (lots of others)

Representations of the full UI: ITS, UIDE, Humanoid, MasterMind,

Newer: (XML-based) ConcurTaskTrees, Xweb, ICrafter, Supple, PUC

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Dialog Box Creators

Easiest part of the UI to create Given a list of the contents, automatically:

1. choose widgets: specify type of desired input:

string = text input fieldnumber = sliderone-of-many = radio buttons or pop-up optionsmany-of-many = check boxes or checks in a menucommands = menu

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Dialog Box Creators, cont.

2. arrange widgets based on look-and-feel guidelines

where OK goes which commands go in which menus

based on good graphic design principles.

3. set variables to reduce the number of callbacks necessary

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Example: Mickey Programmer specifies UI by

putting special comments in aPascal file.

Uses the Apple Macintoshguidelines

Pre-processor to parse thePascal code and generate theMacintosh resources.

Maps Procedures into Menuitems. If parameter is one of a standard

set, pops up appropriate dialogbox or waits for input File to be read, file to be written New point, line or rectangle

8

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Mickey, cont. Variables:

Enumerated types mapped tocheck lists separated by lines. Sets the variables when changed.

Enumerated types with 2 choices mapped to name changes

Booleans: single checked items

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Jade Brad Vander Zanden and Brad A. Myers,  "Automatic, Look-and-Feel

Independent Dialog Creation for Graphical User Interfaces," Proceedings SIGCHI'90: Human Factors in Computing Systems.  Seattle, WA, April 1-5, 1990. pp. 27-34. ACM DL Reference

"Judgment-based Automatic Dialog Editor" Given a textual specification of just the

contents and their types, creates a dialog box Separately specify which look-and-feel

(not part of the specification) Defines mapping from types to widget

selection Graphic design rules for "nice" layout

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DON (Won Chul Kim & Foley, InterCHI'93, pp. 430-437)

ACM DL Reference Ultimate in dialog box layout Kim's PhD thesis Works with OpenLook and devGuide Allows interactive designer guidance (preferences) on

sizes, layout, widget choice, etc. Can also choose among proposed layouts

Sophisticated 2-D layout Tries to balance dialog box Groupings of related items Effective use of white space (even margins, minimize wasted

space) Generates multiple designs and uses an evaluation metric to

choose.11© 2013 - Brad Myers

Don, pictures

PDF, with other pictures

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Generating Full UI

These next tools require a specification of the full UI

Usually have rule-based components Specifications are in a special language

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Interactive Transaction System (ITS)

Bennett, et.al., UIST'89 pp. 67-75 Wiecha, et.al. CHI'89, pp. 277-282 Wiecha, et.al., ACM TOIS, 8(3), Jul'90, pp. 204-236 Goal: capture designers knowledge as style rules

So unlike other systems, designer is required to edit the rules, not just the specification

All of UI must be created by editing the rules no interactive editing of generated interface (since then the knowledge

about why the generated interface wasn't good enough would be lost) Like dialog-box systems, separate specification of content

and style Style-independent tags associated with content "Style expert" programs the style for each tag Styles include both output (display) and input (interaction

techniques) specifications 14© 2013 - Brad Myers

ITS, cont. Can handle dialog boxes, forms, node-link diagrams,

kiosk frames, etc. Used for a number of internal IBM applications Used for all the information services at Expo'90 in Spain

Information, maps, restaurant reservations, etc. IBM researchers and content experts were in Spain for months

Evaluation + Full representation of design may increase re-use - Design specification ends up containing many specific "hacks"

used to achieve specific effects in single interfaces - Complex formal language for specification and rules

Pictures from ITS, TOIS, 8(3), pp. 213, 215, 217

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ITS, pictures

PDF

The User Interface Design Environment (UIDE)

Foley, et. al. CHI'88, pp. 67-72 Foley, et. al. IEEE Software, Jan'89, 25-32; Sukaviriya, et. al. InterCHI'93, pp. 375-382 Long-term project of Foley's at George

Washington and Georgia Tech Ended about 1994 when Foley left

A loose collection of separate implementations: IDL's transformations DON dialog boxes (described above) Sukaviriya's animated help Martin Frank's work (EET in Event-Based lecture) - etc.

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UIDE Programmer defines Knowledge-base "schemas"

describing parts of the interface: Objects: in a class, sub-class inheritance hierarchy Actions: what can be done in the interface

Pre-conditions and post-conditions are in a very limited language counting, booleans, simple tests used for testing enabled and explaining why

Transformations change among equivalent UIs: e.g. Currently-selected obj <=> currently-selected cmd performed based on pre-, post-conditions

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Pictures from UIDE

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UIDE, cont. Automatic generate help for why commands are

not available Sukaviriya, et. al. AVI’94, Pages: 44 - 52   Animated help provides animations as a tutorial

Determines what needs to be done to demonstrate action Sequence of actions E.g. bring windows to the front, create an object, etc.

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UIDE

Evaluation + Support for more than dialog boxes - Pre and post condition language is weak

can't express the test "if the selected object is a polygon..."

- Model language is a different, difficult language to learn

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Humanoid

Szekely, et. al. UIST'90, pp. 1-9 Szekely, et. al. CHI'92, pp. 507-514 Szekely, et. al. InterCHI'93, pp. 383-390 High-level UIMS for Manufacturing

Applications Needing Organized Iterative Development

Model application data and interaction similar to UIDE

Model whole application: semantics + interface

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Humanoid, cont. System picks generic interaction techniques

immediately using "templates" Designer can refine interface iteratively by

creating more specific sub-classes: Single-Command-Input-With-Alternatives Single-Command-Input-With-Few-Alternatives Allows exploration with incomplete designs

Evaluation + Much richer specification language than UIDE - More complex to define interfaces (more to learn)

but interactive tools help23© 2013 - Brad Myers

Humanoid Pictures

Pictures from Humanoid, CHI'93 pp. 384

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MasterMind Neches, et. al. ACM 1993 Intelligent User Interfaces Workshop, pp.

63-70 Models Allowing Shared Tools and Explicit Representations to

Make Interfaces Natural to Develop Idea: combine UIDE and Humanoid Support entire life-cycle: early conceptual design through

maintenance Knowledge base is shared among all tools

Knowledge base serves as an integrating framework for various tools at design time and run time.

Spent a lot of time negotiating on how to combine models Lots of different parts to the model Personnel and coordination problems in doing the research Used Amulet!

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MasterMindOne of the first system to integrate multiple models

together

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MastermindPictures

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Research continued…

Fragmented into two different approaches Software engineering approach (early 90’s-)

Very detailed models to improve overall design process Intelligent design assistants instead of automatic generation Significant use of task models

Ubiquitous computing approach (2000-) Tons of “invisible” processors that perform tasks for us UIs for these processors are presented on other devices

(mobile phone, PDA, speech, etc.) Impossible to manually build user interfaces for every

combination

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What are task models, anyway?

Key part of many current HCI approaches Description of the process a user takes to reach a

goal in a specific domain Typically have hierarchical structure

Introduced by GOMS

Number of different task modeling languages GOMS, CogTool UAN ConcurTaskTrees

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ConcurTaskTrees Developed by Fabio Paterno et al.

for the design of user interfaces

Goals Graphical for easy interpretation Concurrent model for representing UI

tasks Different task types

Represent all tasks, including those performed by the system

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Building/Editing Task Models

Tools are available ConcurTaskTrees

Environment

http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/ctte.html or Google for “ConcurTaskTrees”

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Software Engineering Approach Commercial work “Model-based design” Example: BPMN “business

process modeling notation” Business experts should be

able to author models Converted into code to

support the process (requires people) Keynote at ICSE’08: Herbert Hanselmann: Challenges in

Automotive Software Engineering “Model-based design (MBD) of functional behaviour has been a

big help in the recent past”

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Mobi-D Angel Puerta, IUI’97 Set of tools to support

a clearly defined development cycle

Uses a series of different models

Explicit relationships that specify how the models are related to each other

Explicit interaction between end users and developers

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XIMLeXtensible Interface Markup Language XIML.org Based on Mobi-D work Supports full development lifecycle Used by RedWhale Software to drive

their interface consultant business They have developed many tools

move interaction data to/from XIML Leverage data in XIML to better

understand various interfaces Automate parts of the interface design

process

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Other Systems

UIML (http://www.harmonia.com/)

Originally a research project at Virginia Tech, now being developed commercially by Harmonia

Goal is platform independent language for describing UI Early versions were not very platform independent Recent versions using task models to automatically generate parts of the old

language that were not platform independent

Teresa (http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/teresa.html)

Transformation Environment for inteRacti Tool for taking ConcurTaskTrees models, building an abstract interface, and then

building a concrete interface on multiple platforms.

USIXML (http://www.usixml.org)

Many of the same features of XIML Novel aspect is the use of graph structure for modeling relations (seems very

complex)35© 2013 - Brad Myers

Ubiquitous Computing Approach

“Pervasive computing cannot succeed if every device must be accompanied by its own interactive software and hardware…What is needed is a universal interactive service protocol to which any compliant interactive client can connect and access any service.”

-Dan Olsen (Xweb paper)

The web comes close to solving this problem, but is interactively insufficient.

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Systems addressing UI issues

XWeb Now known as ICE – Interactive Computing Everywhere

ICrafter A system for integrating user interfaces from multiple

devices Supple

A system for automatically generating interfaces with a focus on customization/personalization.

Personal Universal Controller Jeff Nichol’s research…

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XWeb

Work by Dan Olsen and group at BYU E.g. UIST’2000, pp.191 - 200  

Premise: Apply the web metaphor to services in general Support higher levels of interactivity

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XWeb Example

Interface

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ICrafter

Part of the Interactive Workspaces research project at Stanford

Ponnekanti, et. al. Ubicomp’2001 Main objective:

“to allow users of interactive workspaces to flexibly interact with services”

Contribution An intelligent infrastructure to find services, aggregate

them into a single interface, and generate an interface for the aggregate service.

In practice, much of the interface generation is done by hand though automatic generation is supported.

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Supple

Eventual goal is to support automatic personalization of user interfaces

Treats generation of interfaces as an optimization problem

Can take into account usage patterns in generation

Krzysztof Gajos and Daniel S. Weld, “SUPPLE: Automatically Generating User Interfaces” in Proceedings of Intelligent User Interfaces 2004, Funchal, Portugal.

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Modeling Users with Traces

Supple uses traces to keep a usage model Sequences of events:

<interface element, old value, new value>

Interfaces are rendered taking the traces into account (though traces are not required)

Trails are segmented at interface close or reset

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Generating with Optimization Uses a branch-and-

bound search to explore space of alternatives Guaranteed to find

an optimal solution

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Screenshots

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Personal Universal Controller Jeff Nichol’s PhD work Problem:

Appliance interfaces are too complex and too idiosyncratic.

Solution: Separate the interface from the appliance and use

a device with a richer interface to control the appliance: PDA, mobile phone, etc.

Goal: Generate high-quality UIs45© 2013 - Brad Myers

Control

Feedback

Approach

Specifications

Appliances Mobile Devices

Use mobile devices to control all appliances in the environment

Key FeaturesTwo-way communication, Abstract Descriptions, Multiple Platforms, Automatic Interface Generation

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Properties of PUC Language State variables & commands

Each can have multiple labels Useful when not enough room

Typed variables Base types: Boolean, string,

enumerated, integers,fixed-point, floating-point, etc.

Optional labels for values Hierarchical Structure

Groups

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Dependency Information Crucial for high-quality interfaces Expressed as <active-if> clauses

Operations: Equals, Less-Than,

Greater-Than Combined Logically

AND, OR Used for:

Dynamic graying out Layout Widget selection

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Generating Consistent UIs

Personally consistent Reduce learning time Add unique functions

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Generating Combined UIs

For multiple appliances, such as home theaters

Specify content flow Combined controls

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Summative Study Compared PUC to manufacturer’s

interfaces for HP and Canon printer/fax/copiers

PUC twice as fast, 1/3 the errors Consistent: another factor of 2 faster

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Model-based systems advantages/disadvantages + Separate specification of UI from content + Automatic reformatting, retargeting for different

platforms, customization to users + May allow programmers (non-experts) to write

specification and have a good UI automatically created But this didn’t really work out

– Result is often unpredictable – Often UI can be worse UI than hand-drawn – Sometimes model is larger than the code it would

replace – Model often in a different language that must be

learned52© 2013 - Brad Myers