Support Method to Apply User Interface Guidelines to GUIs Using Guideline Templates

Abstract

To realize layout consistency and operability of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), user interface guidelines (UI guidelines) are common. Currently, UI guidelines vary by platform (e.g., operating systems and desktop systems) and even by company. Although UI guidelines must be applied to GUIs, applying them is burdensome for software developers because UI guidelines contain many detailed guideline elements. To reduce this burden, we previously proposed a method to apply user interface guidelines to GUIs. However, this method targets specific UI guidelines. Hence to apply diverse UI guidelines, unified descriptions of guideline elements and mechanisms to automatically apply guideline elements to GUIs must be developed. In this paper, we propose templates to describe guideline elements of various UI guidelines and a method to automatically apply guideline elements to GUIs. The proposed method can support the development of new guideline elements. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.