Polymorphic Logical Description for Automatic Generation of User Centric, Multi-Device Interfaces

Abstract

User and device diversities are two main factors combating efficient information communication in a mobile or pervasive computing environment. Additionally, the derivatives of traditional desktop computer such as handheld and wearable devices suffer from constrained resources. Most of these devices are faced with small display sizes, small computing power and storage capability. Likewise, end users of these devices have different preferences, which must be given utmost consideration during user interface generation. This paper presents a polymorphic logical description (PLD) for achieving user centric, multi-device interfaces. An authoring environment, named custom-MADE (CoMADE) was developed based on PLD for discrete and automatic generation of user centric, multi-device interfaces. User tasks are given a polymorphic description and their relationships are represented and persisted as objects. A user interface is composed based on an explicit user model and real time user preference information. Design, load and runtime are managed by CoMADE. With these, we achieved user centric, multi-device interfaces generation with a high degree of flexibility and direct user participation.