Research And Implementation On Pattern-Based UI Auto-Generation

The User Interface design plays an important role in the software development, and it has gained much attention in the HCI research. The matured UI generate approach nowadays is interface builder which is based on the specific programming language. In recent years, with the development of new technology and the challenges posed by new requirement, e.g. pervasive computing, the traditional UI development measure seems insufficient towards those changes. Among the new attempts, the model-based technique has attracted great attention.When concerning the concept of design pattern in architecture and software engineering, we propose a design pattern based UI generation approach that is context sensitive. In this article, a three-layered pattern core model is given to practice this idea, at the same time an implement framework based on this core model will be brought forth, which can generate a platform independent user interface automatically, accordingly, a variety of platform dependent user interface models can be transformed through mapping, which will facilitate the following software development. As for the HCI task modeling, we take the traditional use case as the basis which can create the model rapidly. Firstly, we structure the event flow of it, and then extend the event with context information binding so that the static UI component can be organized to form the UI page and the page flow.The main contributions are as follows:1. To make the pattern based UI generation approach executes automatically, rather than take it as the instruction for the developer.2. To create the adaptive UI based on the context, which makes it very suitable for the context sensitive applications.3. The use case based task modeling method can meet the requirement of rapid UI generation in dealing with the concept proof stage of software development.An implement example of web based bank application will be given at last to testify the feasibility of the idea.