An e-whiteboard application to support early design-stage sketching of UML diagrams

Abstract

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Supporting Generic Sketching-Based Input of Diagrams in a Domain-Specific Visual Language Meta-Tool

“…Conventional diagramming tools have been shown by many studies to suffer from premature commitment to particular design artefacts and choices; over-constraint of user actions; high viscosity (making designs hard to change); stifling of creativity; and limited collaborative design and review support [29]. As many studies have shown, sketchingbased design tools for a wide range of diagram-centric tasks offer ways of combining the advantages of paperbased and whiteboard-based design with those of computer-based diagramming tools [2,5,7,11,15,20,29]. To date, though, most such research has focused on supporting sketching-based input in a narrow range of design tasks i.e.…”

“…Forms3, a spreadsheet style end user programming environment, has been extended with gestural input [4]. Amulet supports gesture-based document manipulation [25] while Knight [8], SUMLOW [5], and Donaldson et al [9] support UML diagram sketching. Most immediately convert sketched input into computer-drawn formalized content.…”

“…We have also developed stand-alone, ad-hoc sketching support for early-phase UML design [5]. The success of the latter suggested the usefulness of adding sketching features into our design tool meta-toolset.…”

“…A variety of increasingly popular hardware devices support sketch-based input to computer applications, including the Tablet PC, mobile PDAs, large-screen E-whiteboards, and plug-in tablets for conventional PCs and laptops. Much recent research in HCI and user interfaces has demonstrated the potential of such sketching-based user interfaces to enable more human-centric interaction with computers and to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of user interfaces, particularly for early-phase design and during collaborative work [5,8,11,15,16,29].…”

“…[7]. A small number of design-oriented applications have attempted to provide sketching-based UML and user interface design support [5,8,9,20,28], and a few applications have leveraged sketching-based input for code review and to facilitate communication for collaborative work support [8,16,30]. However all of these systems use either specialpurpose tool implementations with limited functionality and integration support or ad-hoc techniques to add sketching-support into existing tools and provide very limited user control over the recognition and formalization of sketched content.…”