Lecture 14: Model-based tools: Creating the UI Automatically Brad Myers 05-830 Advanced User Interface Software Spring 2017 © 2017 - Brad Myers

Model-Based Tools Overview Programmer describes the operation of the system or the user interface in a specification language = the "model". model is a high-level description usually declarative (listing parts and relationships) System automatically creates the interface Uses a low-level toolkit for the widgets © 2017 - Brad Myers

Goals: High-level description of an interface is easier to write than low-level toolkit code Automatic generation may produce better UIs than programmers Allow separation of UI design (embodied in rules) from UI contents (supplied by the programmer) Support dynamic creation of objects define templates or prototypes Increase re-use since design rules shared by multiple applications Tools can reason over the specification to produce extra stuff: Automatic generation of help, undo, etc. Transform interface into different but functionally equivalent interface Enabling and disabling of widgets Enforcement or checking of design guidelines- consistency, completeness Enforces consistency since rules will pick similar objects for similar situations Automatic adjustment to different screen sizes, etc., since rules can take this into account Automatic analysis for quality NGOMSL analysis : GLEAN (Kieras, UIST'95) © 2017 - Brad Myers

Overview, cont. Related to the "Declarative" approach discussed in previous lecture but here system has some intelligence or knowledge so less has to be specified by the programmer. Different types: Dialog box creators: Mickey, DON, Jade (lots of others) Representations of the full UI: ITS, UIDE, Humanoid, MasterMind, Later: (XML-based) ConcurTaskTrees, Xweb, ICrafter, Supple, PUC © 2017 - Brad Myers

Dialog Box Creators Easiest part of the UI to create Given a list of the contents, automatically: choose widgets: specify type of desired input: string = text input field number = slider one-of-many = radio buttons or pop-up options many-of-many = check boxes or checks in a menu commands = menu © 2017 - Brad Myers

Dialog Box Creators, cont. arrange widgets based on look-and-feel guidelines where OK goes which commands go in which menus based on good graphic design principles. set variables to reduce the number of callbacks necessary © 2017 - Brad Myers

Example: Mickey Programmer specifies UI by putting special comments in a Pascal file. Uses the Apple Macintosh guidelines Pre-processor to parse the Pascal code and generate the Macintosh resources. Maps Procedures into Menu items. If parameter is one of a standard set, pops up appropriate dialog box or waits for input File to be read, file to be written New point, line or rectangle © 2017 - Brad Myers

Mickey, cont. Variables: Enumerated types mapped to check lists separated by lines. Sets the variables when changed. Enumerated types with 2 choices mapped to name changes Booleans: single checked items © 2017 - Brad Myers

Jade Brad Vander Zanden and Brad A. Myers,  "Automatic, Look-and-Feel Independent Dialog Creation for Graphical User Interfaces," Proceedings SIGCHI'90: Human Factors in Computing Systems.  Seattle, WA, April 1-5, 1990. pp. 27-34. ACM DL Reference "Judgment-based Automatic Dialog Editor" Given a textual specification of just the contents and their types, creates a dialog box Separately specify which look-and-feel (not part of the specification) Defines mapping from types to widget selection Graphic design rules for "nice" layout © 2017 - Brad Myers

DON (Won Chul Kim & Foley, InterCHI'93, pp. 430-437) ACM DL Reference Ultimate in dialog box layout Kim's PhD thesis Works with OpenLook and devGuide Allows interactive designer guidance (preferences) on sizes, layout, widget choice, etc. Can also choose among proposed layouts Sophisticated 2-D layout Tries to balance dialog box Groupings of related items Effective use of white space (even margins, minimize wasted space) Generates multiple designs and uses an evaluation metric to choose. © 2017 - Brad Myers

Don, pictures PDF, with other pictures © 2017 - Brad Myers

Generating Full UI These next tools require a specification of the full UI Usually have rule-based components Specifications are in a special language © 2017 - Brad Myers

Interactive Transaction System (ITS) Bennett, et.al., UIST'89 pp. 67-75 Wiecha, et.al. CHI'89, pp. 277-282 Wiecha, et.al., ACM TOIS, 8(3), Jul'90, pp. 204-236 Goal: capture designers knowledge as style rules So unlike other systems, designer is required to edit the rules, not just the specification All of UI must be created by editing the rules no interactive editing of generated interface (since then the knowledge about why the generated interface wasn't good enough would be lost) Like dialog-box systems, separate specification of content and style Style-independent tags associated with content "Style expert" programs the style for each tag Styles include both output (display) and input (interaction techniques) specifications © 2017 - Brad Myers

ITS, cont. Can handle dialog boxes, forms, node-link diagrams, kiosk frames, etc. Used for a number of internal IBM applications Used for all the information services at Expo'90 in Spain Information, maps, restaurant reservations, etc. IBM researchers and content experts were in Spain for months Evaluation + Full representation of design may increase re-use - Design specification ends up containing many specific "hacks" used to achieve specific effects in single interfaces - Complex formal language for specification and rules Pictures from ITS, TOIS, 8(3), pp. 213, 215, 217 © 2017 - Brad Myers

ITS, pictures PDF © 2017 - Brad Myers

The User Interface Design Environment (UIDE) Foley, et. al. CHI'88, pp. 67-72 Foley, et. al. IEEE Software, Jan'89, 25-32; Sukaviriya, et. al. InterCHI'93, pp. 375-382 Long-term project of Foley's at George Washington and Georgia Tech Ended about 1994 when Foley left A loose collection of separate implementations: IDL's transformations DON dialog boxes (described above) Sukaviriya's animated help Martin Frank's work (EET in Event-Based lecture) - etc. © 2017 - Brad Myers

UIDE Programmer defines Knowledge-base "schemas" describing parts of the interface: Objects: in a class, sub-class inheritance hierarchy Actions: what can be done in the interface Pre-conditions and post-conditions are in a very limited language counting, Booleans, simple tests used for testing enabled and explaining why Transformations change among equivalent UIs: e.g. Currently-selected obj <=> currently-selected cmd performed based on pre-, post-conditions © 2017 - Brad Myers

Pictures from UIDE © 2017 - Brad Myers

UIDE, cont. Automatic generate help for why commands are not available Sukaviriya, et. al. AVI’94, Pages: 44 - 52   Animated help provides animations as a tutorial Determines what needs to be done to demonstrate action Sequence of actions E.g. bring windows to the front, create an object, etc. © 2017 - Brad Myers

UIDE Evaluation + Support for more than dialog boxes - Pre and post condition language is weak can't express the test "if the selected object is a polygon..." - Model language is a different, difficult language to learn © 2017 - Brad Myers

Humanoid Szekely, et. al. UIST'90, pp. 1-9 Szekely, et. al. CHI'92, pp. 507-514 Szekely, et. al. InterCHI'93, pp. 383-390 High-level UIMS for Manufacturing Applications Needing Organized Iterative Development Model application data and interaction similar to UIDE Model whole application: semantics + interface © 2017 - Brad Myers

Humanoid, cont. System picks generic interaction techniques immediately using "templates" Designer can refine interface iteratively by creating more specific sub-classes: Single-Command-Input-With-Alternatives Single-Command-Input-With-Few-Alternatives Allows exploration with incomplete designs Evaluation + Much richer specification language than UIDE - More complex to define interfaces (more to learn) but interactive tools help © 2017 - Brad Myers

Humanoid Pictures Pictures from Humanoid, CHI'93 pp. 384 © 2017 - Brad Myers

MasterMind Neches, et. al. ACM 1993 Intelligent User Interfaces Workshop, pp. 63-70 Models Allowing Shared Tools and Explicit Representations to Make Interfaces Natural to Develop Idea: combine UIDE and Humanoid Support entire life-cycle: early conceptual design through maintenance Knowledge base is shared among all tools Knowledge base serves as an integrating framework for various tools at design time and run time. Spent a lot of time negotiating on how to combine models Lots of different parts to the model Personnel and coordination problems in doing the research Used Amulet! © 2017 - Brad Myers

MasterMind One of the first system to integrate multiple models together © 2017 - Brad Myers

Mastermind Pictures © 2017 - Brad Myers

Research continued… Fragmented into two different approaches Software engineering approach (early 90’s-) Very detailed models to improve overall design process Intelligent design assistants instead of automatic generation Significant use of task models Ubiquitous computing approach (2000-) Tons of “invisible” processors that perform tasks for us UIs for these processors are presented on other devices (mobile phone, PDA, speech, etc.) Impossible to manually build user interfaces for every combination © 2017 - Brad Myers

What are task models, anyway? Key part of many current HCI approaches Description of the process a user takes to reach a goal in a specific domain Typically have hierarchical structure Number of different task modeling languages GOMS, CogTool UAN ConcurTaskTrees © 2017 - Brad Myers

Hierarchical Task Model H. Rex Hartson and Pardha S. Pyla. The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience. Morgan Kaufmann / Elsevier. 2012. http://www.theuxbook.net/. p. 218 © 2017 - Brad Myers

Software Engineering Approach Commercial work “Model-based design” Example: BPMN “business process modeling notation” Business experts should be able to author models Converted into code to support the process (requires people) Keynote at ICSE’08: Herbert Hanselmann: Challenges in Automotive Software Engineering “Model-based design (MBD) of functional behaviour has been a big help in the recent past” *** move earlier *** © 2017 - Brad Myers

ConcurTaskTrees Developed by Fabio Paterno et al. for the design of user interfaces Goals Graphical for easy interpretation Concurrent model for representing UI tasks Different task types Represent all tasks, including those performed by the system © 2017 - Brad Myers

Building/Editing Task Models Tools are available ConcurTaskTrees Environment http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/ctte.html or search for “ConcurTaskTrees” © 2017 - Brad Myers

Mobi-D Angel Puerta, IUI’97 Set of tools to support a clearly defined development cycle Uses a series of different models Explicit relationships that specify how the models are related to each other Explicit interaction between end users and developers © 2017 - Brad Myers

XIML eXtensible Interface Markup Language XIML.org Based on Mobi-D work Supports full development lifecycle Used by RedWhale Software to drive their interface consultant business They developed many tools Move interaction data to/from XIML Leverage data in XIML to better understand various interfaces Automate parts of the interface design process © 2017 - Brad Myers

Other Systems UIML (http://www.harmonia.com/) Originally a research project at Virginia Tech, then developed commercially by Harmonia Goal is platform independent language for describing UI Early versions were not very platform independent Later versions using task models to automatically generate parts of the old language that were not platform independent Teresa (http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/teresa.html) Transformation Environment for inteRacti Tool for taking ConcurTaskTrees models, building an abstract interface, and then building a concrete interface on multiple platforms. USIXML (http://www.usixml.org) Many of the same features of XIML Novel aspect is the use of graph structure for modeling relations (seems very complex) © 2017 - Brad Myers

Ubiquitous Computing Approach “Pervasive computing cannot succeed if every device must be accompanied by its own interactive software and hardware…What is needed is a universal interactive service protocol to which any compliant interactive client can connect and access any service.” -Dan Olsen (Xweb paper) The web comes close to solving this problem, but is interactively insufficient. © 2017 - Brad Myers

Systems addressing UI issues XWeb Now known as ICE – Interactive Computing Everywhere ICrafter A system for integrating user interfaces from multiple devices Supple A system for automatically generating interfaces with a focus on customization/personalization. Personal Universal Controller Jeff Nichol’s research © 2017 - Brad Myers

XWeb Work by Dan Olsen and group at BYU E.g. UIST’2000, pp.191 - 200 Premise: Apply the web metaphor to services in general Support higher levels of interactivity © 2017 - Brad Myers

XWeb Example Interface © 2017 - Brad Myers

ICrafter Part of the Interactive Workspaces research project at Stanford Ponnekanti, et. al. Ubicomp’2001 Main objective: “to allow users of interactive workspaces to flexibly interact with services” Contribution An intelligent infrastructure to find services, aggregate them into a single interface, and generate an interface for the aggregate service. In practice, much of the interface generation is done by hand though automatic generation is supported. © 2017 - Brad Myers

iCrafter UI Top: automatic; bottom: custom http://radlab.cs.berkeley.edu/ people/fox/static/pubs/pdf/c08.pdf © 2017 - Brad Myers

Supple Support automatic personalization of user interfaces Treats generation of interfaces as an optimization problem Can take into account usage patterns in generation Krzysztof Gajos and Daniel S. Weld, “SUPPLE: Automatically Generating User Interfaces” in Proceedings of Intelligent User Interfaces 2004, Funchal, Portugal. © 2017 - Brad Myers

Modeling Users with Traces Supple uses traces to keep a usage model Sequences of events: <interface element, old value, new value> Interfaces are rendered taking the traces into account (though traces are not required) Trails are segmented at interface close or reset © 2017 - Brad Myers

Generating with Optimization Uses a branch-and-bound search to explore space of alternatives Guaranteed to find an optimal solution © 2017 - Brad Myers

Screenshots © 2017 - Brad Myers

Personal Universal Controller Jeff Nichol’s PhD work Problem: Appliance interfaces are too complex and too idiosyncratic. Solution: Separate the interface from the appliance and use a device with a richer interface to control the appliance: PDA, mobile phone, etc. Goal: Generate high-quality UIs © 2017 - Brad Myers

Approach Use mobile devices to control all appliances in the environment Specifications Control Feedback Appliances Mobile Devices Key Features Two-way communication, Abstract Descriptions, Multiple Platforms, Automatic Interface Generation © 2017 - Brad Myers

Properties of PUC Language State variables & commands Each can have multiple labels Useful when not enough room Typed variables Base types: Boolean, string, enumerated, integers, fixed-point, floating-point, etc. Optional labels for values Hierarchical Structure Groups © 2017 - Brad Myers

Dependency Information Crucial for high-quality interfaces Expressed as <active-if> clauses Operations: Equals, Less-Than, Greater-Than Combined Logically AND, OR Used for: Dynamic graying out Layout Widget selection © 2017 - Brad Myers

Generating Consistent UIs Personally consistent Reduce learning time Add unique functions © 2017 - Brad Myers

Generating Combined UIs For multiple appliances, such as home theaters Specify content flow Combined controls © 2017 - Brad Myers

Summative Study Compared PUC to manufacturer’s interfaces for HP and Canon printer/fax/copiers PUC twice as fast, 1/3 the errors Consistent: another factor of 2 faster © 2017 - Brad Myers

Model-based systems advantages/disadvantages + Separate specification of UI from content + Automatic reformatting, retargeting for different platforms, customization to users + May allow programmers (non-experts) to write specification and have a good UI automatically created But this didn’t really work out – Result is often unpredictable – Often UI can be worse UI than hand-drawn – Sometimes model is larger than the code it would replace – Model often in a different language that must be learned © 2017 - Brad Myers