Collaborative Wireframing for Model-Driven Web Engineering

Abstract

Today’s Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) approaches automatically generate Web applications from conceptual, domain-specific models. This enhances productivity by simplifying the design process through a higher degree of abstraction. Due to this raised level of abstraction, the collaboration based on conceptual models also opens up new use cases, such as the end user’s tighter involvement into Web development. However, especially in the early design stages of Web applications, common practices for requirement elicitation mostly rely on paper prototypes or wireframes instead of MDWE, created usually in analog settings. The digitization of this process, combined with the benefits of model-driven development, bears a lot of potential for improving MDWE practices. In this contribution, we enhance an existing MDWE approach with wireframing capabilities, realized through real-time synchronization of models, wireframes and code. We present the conceptual considerations of our approach, the realization of the synchronous wireframing tool and the synchronization between wireframe and model. Our evaluation results for collaborative Web development tasks are promising and open the gate towards novel, collaborative and agile MDWE techniques.