DialogSketch: dynamics of the canonical prototypes

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that the combination of task modeling with abstract prototyping improves the effectiveness of the user interface design at an early stage of the development process. Currently there is no effective way to connect popular task and presentation based formalisms (e.g. ConcurTask Trees -- CTTs and Canonical Abstract Prototypes -- CAPs) in interactive system development. Here we present and illustrate an approach that relates CTTs with CAPs under the common semantics of the UML 2.0. We find that an abstract prototype is more suitable as a starting point to represent and infer the task structure that supports the user interaction. Our approach is supported by the DialogSketch tool, which enables the creation, design and editing of a UML version of CAPs and CTTs that can be co-edited and simulated in an innovative way that leverages effective and usable simulation of abstract user-interfaces.