Self-adaptive UIs: Integrated model-driven development of UIs and their adaptations

Abstract

Self-adaptive UIs have been promoted as a solution for context variability due to their ability to automatically adapt to the contextof-use at runtime. In classical model-driven UI development (MDUID) approaches, self-adaptivity and context management introduce additional complexity since self-adaptation features are distributed in a crosscutting manner at various locations in the models. This results in a tightly interwoven model landscape that is hard to understand and maintain. In this paper, we present an integrated model-driven development method where a classical model-driven development of UIs is coupled with a separate model-driven development of UI adaptation rules and context-of-use. We base our approach on the core UI modeling language IFML, and focus on a new modeling language for adaptation rules, called AdaptUI. We show how generated UI code is coupled with adaptation services generated from AdaptUI adaptation rules and integrated in an overall UI framework. This allows runtime UI adaptation realized by an automatic reaction to context-of-use changes. The benefit of our approach is demonstrated by a case study, showing the development of selfadaptive UIs for a university library application, utilizing the Angular 2 JavaScript framework.