Task Models and System Models as A Bridge Between Hci and Software Engineering

Abstract

This chapter claims that task models per se do not contain sufficient and necessary information to permit automatic generation of interactive systems. Beyond this, we claim that they must not contain sufficient and necessary information otherwise they could no longer be considered as task models. On the opposite we propose a way of exploiting in a synergistic way task models with other models to be built during the development process. This chapter presents a set of tools supporting the development of interactive system using two different notations. One of these notations called Concur Task Tree (CTT) is used for task modelling. The other notation called Interactive Cooperative Objects (ICO) is used for system modelling. Even though these two kinds of models represent two different views of the same world (a user interacting with an interactive system) they are built by different people (human factors specialist for the task models and software engineer for the system models) and are used independently. The aim of this chapter is to propose the use of scenarios as a bridge between these two views. On the task modelling side scenarios are seen as a possible trace of users activity. On the system side, scenarios are seen as a trace of users actions. This generic approach is presented on a case study in the domain of Air Traffic Control. As both CTT and ICO notations are tool supported (environments are respectively CTTE and PetShop) an integration tool based on this notion of scenarios is presented. Its use on the selected case study is also presented in details.