Model-driven development for interactive surface prototypes
Everett M. Mthunzi, Mathias Mueller, Dietrich Kammer, Florian Echtler · 2021
Interactive surface prototypes in the research community are typically application-specific. However, common features in existing artifacts suggest recurring design considerations. Given the rapid accumulation of near-identical prototypes, there is a need to promote design reuse. Existing research prototypes motivate abstracting generic components and architectural views to inform future designs. In this paper, we propose a UML-based framework for designing, documenting, and sharing interactive surface prototypes. The framework composes hardware, middleware, and software meta-models to support developers with technology-agnostic guidelines for expressing prototypes unambiguously. The meta-models are based on the study of existing prototypes and are evidence-based. For validation, we use the proposed framework to express interactive surface artifacts from prevailing studies. We then present the resulting model representations to experts to learn their perceptions towards the model-driven approach. As a proof of concept, and to show tacit benefits, we conducted a case study using ReFlex: a software framework for implementing elastic displays. Our findings highlight three significant benefits: (i) an accessible graphical syntax with unambiguous model representation, (ii) a system for capturing arbitrary technical specifications, and (iii) flexible model representation with consistent notation.