Jean Vanderdonckt

Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium)

Abstract

In order to be released from empirical and opportunistic development of user interfaces and to adopt a structured approach throughout the development life cycle, model-driven engineering of user interfaces is typically structured along three dimensions:

1. Conceptual modelling of user interfaces and interaction: models capture the essence of what user interfaces and interaction will be and should be compliant with a meta-model expressing its semantics ; abstract and concrete syntaxes could then be defined to express these semantics, typically through a User Interface Description Language (UIDL).
2. Step-wise and structured approach: a set of rules and general principles should guide the modelling approach in order to master all the steps required to achieve the full development life cycle.
3. Software tools: a software suite is expected to support the aforementioned step-wise approach in order to properly conduct the development life cycle.

Based on the Cameleon Reference Framework (CRF), this lecture provides a retrospective view on model-based and model-driven engineering of user interfaces (eg forward, reverse, and lateral engineering), based on experience gained with some user interface descriptions languages, such as XIML, UIML, and UsiXML. The lecture will review the work of the W3C Model-based User Interface Group, particularly the Abstract User Interface. The lecture will end up with current question on gesture interaction.

Bio

Jean Vanderdonckt is a Full Professor of Computer Science at Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium) where he is President of Louvain School of Management Research Institute (ILSM) and Head of the Louvain Interaction Laboratory (LiLab) since its creation in 1998. He holds a master and an aggregation in mathematics, a master in computer science and a PhD in Sciences from University of Namur. He has been Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University (2000), invited professor at Univ. of Fortaleza (2001), and permanent invited prof. at Polytechnic Univ. of Valencia. He has over 25 years of experience in research and development. Being ACM member since 1987, he is currently ACM and IEEE Senior Member, and member of ACM SIGCHI. He received several awards (e.g., the IBM Belgium Award in Computer Science in 1998, the ACM Service Award for Contributions to ACM in 2004, 2006, and 2010, the Brian Shackel Award in HCI in 2007, the ITEA Research Excellence Award in 2013) and fellowships (e.g., Fulbright-Hayes fellowship in 2000, NATO Advanced Fellowship in 2001). In 2000, he co-created and led BelCHI, the Belgian chapter of ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction). He is the current tenure holder of the IBM-UCL Chair in Strategic Management of Information Systems. He is currently co-editor-in-chief of Springer HCI Series.