A system for specifying and rapidly prototyping user interfaces
Chris Rouff, Ellis Horowitz · Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) · 1991
This paper presents a system for rapidly prototyping user interfaces and a model for specifying them. The model represents the components, flow of control, constraints, and semantic feedback of an interface while the system allows the interface layout, dialogue, and application interface to be interactively defined, resulting in little or no programming to produce a prototype. As a user interface is prototyped, a model of the interface is maintained that represents its structure and functionality. This model can then be compiled into source code with calls to the X Windows and MOTIF libraries. The generated program can then be compiled and linked to application functions to produce an executable program. Other user interface builders only have interactive definitions of the interface layout and specify the dialogue in a programming language, thus requiring a programmer to learn yet another language. The system described here is based on a graph model instead of a programming language and allows complex sequencing, constraints, and the application interface to be defined interactively. This graph model representation also allows analysis of the interface to be made in terms of consistency and completeness of the specification.