Requirements for a definition of generative user interface patterns

Abstract

Patterns for visual GUI design propagate the specification of user interfaces with proven usability and motivate model-based development processes with increased reuse of GUI component compositions. However, a common structure, that captures all the reusability and variability demands, neither has been established for the descriptive form nor the generative kind of user interface patterns. Dedicated GUI specification languages like UIML and UsiXML fail to express pattern definitions that can be instantiated in varying contexts. Thus, model-based processes are required to introduce own media to store those patterns. With our approach, we review the state of the art for generative user interface pattern definition and derive requirements which we refine by a Global Analysis. Finally, we developed a model that accommodates primary factors and their impacts towards the concept for a more sophisticated generative user interface pattern definition. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.