Refinement for user interface designs

Abstract

Abstract. Formal approaches to software development require that we correctly describe (or specify) systems in order to prove properties about our proposed solution prior to building it. We must then follow a rigorous process to transform our specification into an implementation to ensure that the properties we have proved are retained. Different transformation, or refinement, methods exist for different formal methods, but they all seek to ensure that we can guide the transformation in a way which preserves the desired properties of the system. Refinement methods also allow us to subsequently compare two systems to see if a refinement relation exists between the two. When we design and build the user interfaces of our systems we are similarly keen to ensure that they have certain properties before we build them. For example, do they satisfy the requirements of the user? Are they designed with known good design principles and usability considerations in mind? Are they correct in terms of the overall system specification? However, when we come to implement our interface designs we do not have a defined process to follow which ensures that we maintain these properties as we transform the design into code. Instead, we rely on our judgement and belief that we are doing the right thing and subsequent user testing to ensure that our final solution remains useable and satisfactory. We suggest an alternative approach, which is to define a refinement process for user interfaces which will allow us to maintain the same rigorous standards we apply to the rest of the system when we implement our user interface designs.

Creating models of interactive systems with the support of lightweight reverse-engineering tools

“…We have developed a set of models which allow us to formally describe both functional and interactive parts of a software system [1] and have subsequently used these models for a variety of purposes such as testing [4], modelchecking and verification [3], refinement [2] etc. We give a brief overview of the models here as these are the target artefacts we wish to derive via our reverse-engineering process, as such the particular requirements we have are based on the information needed to generate these models.…”

Delineato: A Diagramming User Interface Designed Using a "What You Get is What You Need" Approach

“…Other authors proposed refinements for user interface designs [7], a process aimed at maintaining the same rigorous standards that are applied to the rest of the system when we implement our user interface designs. In many situations designers have to combine several guideline sets in order to address the specific application domain and the desired set of properties corresponding to the application under consideration.…”

UI-design driven model-based testing

“…The combination of the system specification and the UI models (presentation models, PIM and PMR) provides a formal description of the entire system. We have previously shown how we can use this information as a way of ensuring correctness of the the proposed system [BR08a] and also as the basis for refinement [BR08b]. In this paper, however, we will use the models to derive tests which can then be run on an implementation of the system.…”

“…In previous work we have developed models for UIs [BR08a,Bow08] which are based upon design artefacts created as part of a user-centred design (UCD) process. In this paper we investigate whether we can use these models as the basis for model-based testing for interactive systems.…”