Extending interaction flow modeling language (Ifml) for android user interface components

Abstract

Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) is an Object Management Group (OMG) standard for depicting front end behavior of software applications. It provides a platform independent description of graphical user interfaces for web as well as mobile applications. Mobile development has emerged as a vast area of research in the last decade. IFML meta-model caters for many generic user interface (UI) components but several characteristics of mobile application interface are found missing. This paper investigates the user interface characteristics of native android application user interface that are absent in the IFML meta-model. We then propose an extension of the identified characteristics using IFML to supplement usability in Android applications. This extended meta-model can be further used to generate Android platform specific code for user interfaces via model to code transformation.