The Research Of Task Model Based User Interface Automatic Generation

In the past few years, the research and application of Model Driven Architecture in software engineering field have been more and more popular. Many researchers on HCI have being pay more attentions on MDA, and they are trying to apply model-driven concept in research about user interface automatic generation.Under this background, many kinds of concepts and theories about task-baseduser interface generation have arisen. Fabio Patemo' proposed the Concurrent Task Trees (CTT) Notation, which based on graphical notation and is used to describe task model. More and more universities and institutes have used CTT notation to research the task analysis of user interface. Many tools and prototype systems which support task-based user interface generation also have been developed, such as CTTE/TERESA which is developed by Giulio Mori, Fabio Paterno' and Carmen Santoro, and Dygimes prototype system which is proposed by Tim Clerckx.This thesis will take ConcurTaskTrees task model as the main research object, and we discuss two problems that we encounter in CoucurTaskTrees task model based user interface generation:1. The formal analysis and description for ConcurTaskTrees task model. We will define the state predicate of a task and use it to describe the state of this task during the execution process. Based on this concept, the State Transition Network (STN) will be used to describe the dynamic execution process of a group of tasks. Then we will define a goup of rules which based on predicate formula extract the meaning of temporal relations in ConcurTaskTrees task model.2. How to extract dialog/navigation model of user interface from a ConcurTaskTrees task model. Based on relative research of Dygimes prototype system, we will propose the concept temporal relation Operation, and will turn the extract process into a calculation process of a temporal relation operation expression. My work will mainly focus on two faces: one is the process that turn a concurrent task tree into a temporal relation operation expression tree, the other is the definition for basic temporal relation operation. The dialog/navigation is represented by a STN in my approach, and then a temporal relation operation actually is operation to this STN. Calculation of an expression is actually to merge STN. My approach improves the method that is proposed by Dygimes prototype system.At last, this thesis will propose a user interface automatic generation process that is based on ConcurTaskTrees task model as a result.