Towards a Common Semantic Foundation for Use Cases and Task Models

Abstract

Use cases are the notation of choice for functional requirements documentation, whereas task models are used as a starting point for user interface design. In this paper, we motivate the need for an integrated development methodology in order to narrow the conceptual gap that exists between software engineering and user interface design. A prerequisite is the definition of a common semantic framework. With respect to the definition of a suitable semantic domain, we discuss core requirements and review related work. A preliminary approach based on (sets of) partially ordered sets is presented. A mapping from CTT task models and use case graphs to the before-mentioned formalism is proposed. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.