Model-based design of context-sensitive interactive applications: a discussion of notations

Model-based design of user interfaces can be a viable alternative for other user interface specifications especially in the case of multi-platform and even more so in the case of context-sensitive interactive applications. In this paper we look at several notations used in model-based design methodologies and analyze them according to requirements we determined for the notations. In order to get an overview of how well different approaches are able to support the design context-sensitive interactive applications, we determine a set of models that are relevant for this type of applications and organize them visually in such a way that the level of support for different models and the relations between them could be shown adequately. Several notations used for model-based design of user interface or interactive systems were evaluated using these criteria. The resulting information was used to determine areas where work is needed to design better notations for the involved.