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Evaluating user interface generation approaches: model-based versus model-driven development

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Abstract

Advances in software design possibilities have led to a growing interest in the study of user interfaces (UIs). Many Model-Based User Interface Development Environments (MB-UIDEs) have been proposed to deal with the generation of the UIs (semi-) automatically by using models with different levels of abstraction. Often, this generation is limited to the UI part of an application. However, achieving true model-driven development (MDD) requires the co-development of application and UI and, hence, needs to go a step further. This paper analyzes a large set of existing MB-UIDEs, evaluates, from a critical perspective, to what extent they can be considered full MDD environments, and adequately addresses the co-design of UI and application. Following the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and Charters (Engineering 2, 2007), we performed a systematic literature review. A total of 96 papers were examined. Based on these papers, an assessment framework containing 10 criteria with specific metrics to evaluate MB-UIDEs was defined and 30 different environments were evaluated following these criteria. The evaluation identifies several gaps in the existing state of the art and highlights the areas of promising improvement. The evaluation shows that, although a strong progress has being achieved over the last years, the existing environments do not yet fully exploit the benefits and potentialities of MDD, nor do they adequately integrate UI design with application logic design and generation. Further research needs to be done to support the MDD of UIs and the co-design of the underlying application. The difficulty of use of the existing MB-UIDEs, the lack of UI design flexibility, and the lack of complete and integrated development support are the main research gaps that need to be addressed.

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Notes

  1. http://www.andromda.org/.

  2. https://eclipse.org/acceleo/downloads/.

  3. http://www.arcstyler.com.

  4. http://www.ifml.org.

  5. https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/.

  6. http://www.leonardi-free.org and http://www.w4.eu.

  7. Olivanova software: http://software.olivanova.com/uk/.

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Acknowledgements

This project was funded by the VLIR-UOS program under the Cuba Network project ZIUS2015AP033.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Holguín, XX Anniversary Ave, 80100, Holguín, Cuba

    Jenny Ruiz

  2. KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 69, 3000, Louvain, Belgium

    Estefanía Serral & Monique Snoeck

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  1. Jenny Ruiz
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  2. Estefanía Serral
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  3. Monique Snoeck
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Estefanía Serral.

Additional information

Communicated by Dr. Jeff Gray and Heinrich Hussmann.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Search strings per repository

Repository

Search string

Web of Science

Theme: (“model-based user interface” OR “model-driven user interface” OR MDUID OR MDUI OR MDEUI OR MBUIDE OR MB-UIDE OR MBUID OR MB-UID) AND theme: (development or design or generation).

Scopus

TITLE-ABS-KEY ((“model-based user interface” OR “model-driven user interface” OR MDUID OR MDUI OR MDEUI OR MBUIDE OR MB-UIDE OR MBUID OR MB-UID) AND (design OR development OR generation)) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “COMP”) OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “ENGI”))

Appendix 2

Exclusion criteria for the systematic search.

  • Short papers

  • Papers analyzing approaches in an early stage

  • Books of proceedings

  • Papers with techniques for a specific aspect or development phase (e.g., adaptation technique, prototyping technique, layouting technique, consistency check technique, requirement elicitation phase) (or comparison of techniques)

  • Papers with analysis of languages or notations (or comparison of languages or notations)

  • Papers with tools used to edit some kind of model

  • Papers for which the full text is not available

  • Paper discussing a prediction tool

  • Paper with usability assessment

  • Paper analyzing principles of unified UI development

  • Paper presenting specification of interactive questionnaires

  • Paper with a taxonomy to evaluate task models

  • Paper with a Web-based ontology editor

  • Paper with authoring tool

  • Paper with a discussion of patterns

Number of discarded papers according to these exclusion criteria

Cause

Discarded

Short papers

16

Early stage

19

Book of proceedings

20

Technique for only a specific aspect or development phase comparison of techniques

71

Language or notation, or comparison among languages or notations

22

Tool for some kind of model

29

Paper not available

8

Remaining reasons

36

Total

221

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Ruiz, J., Serral, E. & Snoeck, M. Evaluating user interface generation approaches: model-based versus model-driven development. Softw Syst Model 18, 2753–2776 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-018-0698-x

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