Multi-Facet Design of Interactive Systems through Visual Languages
Daniela Fogli, Andrea Marcante, Piero Mussio · IGI Global eBooks · 2011
In this chapter it is recognized that the knowledge relevant to the design of an interactive system is distributed among several stakeholders: domain experts, software engineers and Human-Computer Interaction experts. Hence, the design of an interactive system is a multi-facet activity requiring the collaboration of experts from these communities. Each community describes an interactive system through visual sentences of a Visual Language (VL). A first VL allows domain experts to reason on the system usage in their specific activities. A second VL, the State-Chart language, is used to specify the system behaviour for software engineers purposes. A communication gap exists among the two communities, in that domain experts do not understand software engineers jargon and vice versa. To overcome this gap, a third VL permits Human-Computer Interaction experts to translate the user view of the system embedded in their Visual Language into a specification in the software engineering Visual Language.