Programmable applications: exploring the potential for language/interface symbiosis

Programmable applications are software systems that seek to combine the learnability and accessibility of direct manipulation interfaces with the expressive power and range of programming languages. In this paper we explore techniques for creatively integrating language and interface constructs within programmable applications. Using SchemePaint—a programmable graphics application—as a source of examples, we demonstrate how an interface and language can combine symbolically and thereby provide powerful modes of expression within applications.     

A theoretical framework and empirical examination of the effects of foreign and translated interface language

Given the increased globalization and popularization of computer applications, translating a system's human interface into the local language has become a major consideration for software vendors and distributors. In this paper, we suggest a theoretical framework for the study of user interface translation. The framework includes recognizing vendors' and users' costs of, and benefits from, software translation. An experiment was conducted, based on this framework, to test user performance and preferences regarding interface translations. The experiment manipulated the translation of two interface components: documentation language and manipulation language. The results indicate that users are sensitive to different combinations of interface translation in a way that is commensurate with the instruction-following process (Terwilliger and Polson 1997). Users performed best when a fully translated interface was used and worst when only the manipulation language was translated. Users' preferences were in line with their performance, indicating that a cost benefit approach can serve as a promising starting point to the study of interface translation.     

Standardizing the narrative of use cases: A controlled vocabulary of web user tasks

ContextFor user interfaces design, the use of appropriate terminology in writing use case narratives may determine the effectiveness of the design process, facilitating communication within multidisciplinary web development teams and leading to agreed designs.ObjectiveThis paper proposes a user task vocabulary for web user interface design. This vocabulary compiles terms related to the use of web applications, regardless of the application domain, as a way of standardizing the terminology used in the elaboration of use case narrative. The use of the vocabulary would help to reduce misunderstandings within multidisciplinary web development teams.MethodThe construction of the vocabulary is based on the combination of both committee and empirical approaches. Committee approaches rely on experts in designing web applications, while empirical ones are focused on analyzing content objects, such as interaction design patterns and use case narratives.ResultsThe final version of the monolingual controlled vocabulary of web user tasks compiles a total of 40 tasks; each of them has a key term and a definition of the interaction carried out by users. Additionally, 41 semantic relationships were collected and represented as synonyms. The vocabulary has been assessed through an expert evaluation, proving its correctness and completeness, and an usability evaluation checking the efficacy of the vocabulary.ConclusionThe language employed in use case narratives can determine the value of use cases for designing user interfaces. The usage of a controlled vocabulary may allow designers to elaborate unambiguous use case narratives as a way of creating consistent task models for designing web user interfaces.     

A rigorous methodology for specification and verification of business processes

Both specification and verification of business processes are gaining more and more attention in the field. Most of the existing works in the last years are dealing with important, yet very specialized, issues. Among these, we can enumerate compensation constructs to cope with exceptions generated by long running business transactions, fully programmable fault and compensation handling mechanism, web service area, scope-based compensation and shared-labels for synchronization, and so on. The main purpose of this paper is to present a semi-automatized framework to describe and analyse business processes. Business analysts can now use a simple specification language (e.g., BPMN [Obj06]) to describe any type of activity in a company, in a concurrent and modular fashion. The associated programs (e.g., BPDs [Obj06]) have to be executed in an appropriate language (e.g., BPEL4WS [ACD⁺03]). Much more, they have to be confirmed to be sound, via some prescribed (a priori) conditions. We suggest how all the issues can be embedded in a unifying computer tool. We link our work with similar approaches and we justify our particular choices (besides BPMN and BPD): the TLA+ language for expressing the imposed behavioural conditions and Petri Nets ([EB87], [EB88]) to describe an intermediate semantics. In fact, we want to manage in an appropriate way the general relationship diagram (Fig. 1). Examples and case studies are provided. General relationship diagram     

A light-weight UIMS

We built a limited but successful user interface management system named HYPE which supports rapid interactive creation and organization of user interfaces for a large class of applications. HYPE is targeted at applications for which the user interface is only loosely coupled to the application. Examples of this class of application are ‘command line-driven’ programs. Many applications in this class can be quickly given satisfactory direct-manipulation interfaces with little or no reprogramming of the application. The programmer need only be familiar with HYPE, and not with the particular windowing system upon which it sits.

• 1 The appearance of the interface is specified interactively through the direct manipulation of interface components.
• 2 The behaviour of the interface is programmed with an interpreted procedural language which can send and receive messages and invoke system services. In particular, it can execute applications.
• 3 The structure of the interface is a tree of potentially-visible objects which communicate with the user, the system, and each other through message passing. The tree structure facilitates grouping interfaces for related applications, or families of applications, into a single master interface.

Visual layout, tree-building, behaviour assignment (programming) and execution of the interface all occur within HYPE, a conjunction that makes it a powerful prototyping tool.     

A Spoken Dialogue System for Navigation in Non-Immersive Virtual Environments

Navigation is the process by which people control their movement in virtual environments and is a corefunctional requirement for all virtual environment (VE) applications. Users require the ability to move, controllingorientation, direction of movement and speed, in order to achieve a particular goal within a VE. Navigation israrely the end point in itself (which is typically interaction with the visual representations of data) but applicationsoften place a high demand on navigation skills, which in turn means that a high level of support for navigationis required from the application. On desktop systems navigation in non‐immersive systems is usually supportedthrough the usual hardware devices of mouse and keyboard. Previous work by the authors shows that many usersexperience frustration when trying to perform even simple navigation tasks — users complain about getting lost,becoming disorientated and finding the interface `difficult to use'. In this paper we report on work in progressin exploiting natural language processing (NLP) technology to support navigation in non‐immersive virtualenvironments. A multi‐modal system has been developed which supports a range of high‐level (spoken) navigationcommands and indications are that spoken dialogue interaction is an effective alternative to mouse and keyboardinteraction for many tasks. We conclude that multi‐modal interaction, combining technologies such as NLP withmouse and keyboard may offer the most effective interaction with VEs and identify a number of areas where furtherwork is necessary. ACM CSS: I.3.6 Computer Graphics Methodology and Techniques—Interaction and Techniques, I.3.7 Three‐DimensionalGraphics and Realism—Virtual Reality, I.2.7 Natural Language Processing—Speech Recognitionand Synthesis     

Case study: Using its style tools to implement IBM's CUA-2 user interface style

In an empirical case study of software tools, two participants used the ITS style designer's language to implement a general purpose, executable, rule-based user interface style. This language allows style designers to select, combine and modify rule prototypes in order to construct a rule-based user interface style. The participants implemented the entire IBM CUA-2 user interface style, plus nine additional human-computer interaction techniques, in 5–7 person-weeks. This is impressive productivity. Typically the time to complete a single CUA-2 application is measured in person-years, not person-weeks. The style implemented here is reusable by any ITS-implemented application. The achievement reported here shows that about half the work of all ITS-implemented CUA-2 applications has been completed in a few person-weeks. This result demonstrates the power and productivity of the ITS approach and tools. The results of this case study showed that key ‘ready-mades’ (e.g. named attribute groups) provided in the style designer's toolkit could be used intact, which is important for importing or exporting interaction techniques from one style to another style. The results generalize to other computer-literate designers who may want to use these tools to create other user interface styles.     

Interfacing Indigolog and OAA: A Toolkit for Advanced Multiagent Applications

In this paper, we describe an interface library IG-OAAlib that supports the development of Open Agent Architecture (OAA) agents using the INDIGOLOG agent programming language. OAA is a multi-agent infrastructure that supports facilitated communication. INDIGOLOG is a high-level agent programming language based on logic that supports planning and allows complex agent behaviors to be specified. Full-fledged INDIGOLOG agents written using our interface library can be both reactive and proactive, thus overcoming one of the limitations of PROLOG-based agents in the OAA framework. The interface hides all of the low-level procedures that are used to communicate with the OAA system, as well as OAA initialization, thereby leaving the INDIGOLOG programmer free to concentrate on the functionality of the agent. A multi-robot mail delivery application developed using the library is presented.     

Networks and artworks: the failure of the user friendly interface

Abstract

This essay describes how communication systems have been used by a few artists and attempts to place their practice within the historical and critical context of postmodernist dialogue and, in particular, the evolution of a new communication paradigm. It also questions the value of ‘user-friendly’ user interfaces. By adopting metaphors which reflect existing media usage these interface tools reinforce traditional points-of-view and make it difficult, if not impossible, to investigate and develop a new multimedia context and ‘language’.     

A STUDY OF REJEWSKI'S EQUATIONS

Abstract

The Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA) has been around for just over ten years. It is probably the most “minimal”—and hence fastest—block cipher ever devised and yet appears resistant to most attacks. In this article, we describe the algorithm, its simplicity of design and ease of use, its cryptographic strength, and the wide range of implementations and applications of the cipher.     

The impact of interface-induced handling requirements on action generation in technical system control

Abstract

In analysing action generation in technical system control we differentiate between a purely cognitive stage of pre-actional decision-making and an action-related cognitive-physical stage of action planning and plan execution. This study investigates the impact of interface-induced handling requirements on the action-related processes in the domain of artificial respiration in intensive care. Thirty-two novice and experienced intensive care nurses had to solve three realistic control tasks on two types of respiration unit equipped either with an ‘analogue’ or with a ‘digital’ user interface. The quality of the novices’ plan execution and—unexpectedly— action planning, too, decreased when working on the ‘digital’ interface. Interface-induced handling requirements obviously have an important influence on the usability of technical systems not only on a purely cognitive level, but also on the action-related level.     

Using hypertext for semiformal representation in requirements engineering practice

Abstract

Requirements engineering is insufficiently supported in practice, especially the issue of appropriate formality of the requirements’ representation during their definition is yet unsolved. Since informal natural language has its disadvantages and immediate formal representation is very difficult, a mediating representation is needed. Therefore, we developed a novel approach to requirements engineering — with tool support — that is based on hypertext. We utilize hypertext primarily for semiformal representation, that can help to bridge the informality/formality gap between human and computer. We have applied our approach in real-world projects, and our experience suggests its usefulness. As a consequence, we recommend the use of hypertext for the specification of requirements in practice.     

Reconfigurable computing: design methodology and hardware tasks scheduling for real-time image processing

Technology evolution makes possible the integration of heterogeneous components as programmable elements (processors), hardware dedicated blocks, hierarchical memories and buses. Furthermore, an optimized reconfigurable logic core embedded within a System-on-Chip will associate the performances of dedicated architecture and the flexibility of programmable ones. In order to increase performances, some of the applications are carried out in hardware, using dynamically reconfigurable logic, rather than software, using programmable elements. This approach offers a suitable hardware support to design malleable systems able to adapt themselves to a specific application. This article makes a synthesis of the Ardoise project. The first objective of Ardoise project was to design and to produce a dynamically reconfigurable platform based on commercial FPGAs. The concept of dynamically reconfigurable architecture depends partially on new design methodologies elaboration as well as on the programming environment. The platform architecture was designed to be suitable for real-time image processing. The article outlines mainly the Ardoise tools aspect: development environment and real-time management of the hardware tasks. The proposed methodology is based on a dynamic management of tasks according to an application scenario written using C++ language.

A comparison of command,menu-selection and natural-language computer programs

Abstract

An experiment compared three man-machine language interfaces to the same interactive computer program: command language, menu selection and natural language. No significant differences were found between language modes for time, error and attitude measures. Significant task differences were found for word and line counts as well as for several two-way interactions. The results suggest that the interface to the program (natural language, menu selection or commands) may not be as important as the structure and constraints of the underlying program.     

Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser

Since browsing hypertext can present a formidable cognitive challenge, user interface design plays a major role in determining acceptability. In the Unix workstation version of Hyperties, a research-oriented prototype, we focussed on design features that facilitate browsing. We first give a general overview of Hyperties and its markup language. Customizable documents can be generated by the conditional text feature that enables dynamic and selective display of text and graphics. In addition we present: — an innovative solution to link identification: pop-out graphical buttons of arbitrary shape.

— application of pie menus to permit low cognitive load actions that reduce the distraction of common actions, such as page turning or window selection.

— multiple window selection strategies that reduce clutter and housekeeping effort. We preferred piles-of-tiles, in which standard-sized windows were arranged in a consistent pattern on the display and actions could be done rapidly, allowing users to concentrate on the contents.

     

Graphical user interface (GUI) testing: Systematic mapping and repository

ContextGUI testing is system testing of a software that has a graphical-user interface (GUI) front-end. Because system testing entails that the entire software system, including the user interface, be tested as a whole, during GUI testing, test cases—modeled as sequences of user input events—are developed and executed on the software by exercising the GUI’s widgets (e.g., text boxes and clickable buttons). More than 230 articles have appeared in the area of GUI testing since 1991.ObjectiveIn this paper, we study this existing body of knowledge using a systematic mapping (SM).MethodThe SM is conducted using the guidelines proposed by Petersen et al. We pose three sets of research questions. We define selection and exclusion criteria. From the initial pool of 230 articles, published in years 1991–2011, our final pool consisted of 136 articles. We systematically develop a classification scheme and map the selected articles to this scheme.ResultsWe present two types of results. First, we report the demographics and bibliometrics trends in this domain, including: top-cited articles, active researchers, top venues, and active countries in this research area. Moreover, we derive the trends, for instance, in terms of types of articles, sources of information to derive test cases, types of evaluations used in articles, etc. Our second major result is a publicly-accessible repository that contains all our mapping data. We plan to update this repository on a regular basis, making it a “live” resource for all researchers.ConclusionOur SM provides an overview of existing GUI testing approaches and helps spot areas in the field that require more attention from the research community. For example, much work is needed to connect academic model-based techniques with commercially available tools. To this end, studies are needed to compare the state-of-the-art in GUI testing in academic techniques and industrial tools.