An integration of task and use-case meta-models

Abstract

Although task modeling is a recommended practice in the Human-Computer Interaction community, its acceptance in the Software Engineering community is slow. One likely reason for this is the weak integration between task models and other models commonly used in Software Engineering, notably the set of models promoted by the mainstream UML method. To overcome this problem, we propose to integrate the CTT model of user tasks into the UML, at the meta-model level. CTT task models are used to provide an unambiguous model of the behavior of UML use-cases. By so doing, we also bring the benefit of hierarchical decomposition of use-cases ("extend" and "include" relationships) to CTT. In our approach, CTT tasks also explicitly operate on a UML domain model, by using OCL expressions over a UML object model to express the pre- and post-conditions of tasks. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.