Visual interfaces design simplification through components reuse

Abstract

One way to simplify a visual interface creating process is to give to the interface designer the ability of reusing pre-built visual components representations. In order to avoid premature commitment to specific presentations, and leaves open the prospect of alternative visual presentations for different environments, abstract interaction objects (AIOs) can be used. One of these AIOs is the complex component, which is a component representation having similarity properties with the object-oriented paradigm. This type of component embraces the reuse concept at semantic and functional levels, which contributes to reduce the complexity in the graphical user interface design process. Further advantages of using complex components are the possibility of visual and functional customization of these components, which greatly improves the versatility of them when compared with a widget. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.