Building a unified repository of interaction patterns

Abstract

In recent years there have been many proposals of lists of interaction patterns applicable to the design and development of web interfaces. Many of the patterns proposed in different lists are the same, perhaps with different names and different examples. Our purpose is to join these lists in a unified repository. This requires formalizing the definition of interaction patterns to make them comparable, facilitate their classification or recommend them automatically based on a characterization of user needs, interaction context, etc. In parallel, Web applications using Semantic Web technologies are starting to proliferate. This implies in many cases a paradigm shift for user interaction that requires questioning which are the more appropriate end user tasks, starting from "traditional" Web interaction tasks but taking into account that they might change or raise new tasks. A good characterization of these tasks is then the starting point to explore what patterns can be used to implement them. To facilitate this process, we have built a unified repository of interaction patterns classified by Semantic Web end-user tasks. We have built this repository using Semantic Web technologies.