Engineering multimedia user interfaces with objects and patterns

We discuss the use of an object-oriented design model to describe multimedia user interfaces. Our approach is complemented with a set of design patterns aimed at capturing recurrent interface design problems together with good solutions to those problems. We first introduce the problem of designing usable multimedia interfaces, we then present the Object-Oriented Hypermedia Design Method to contextualize our work. We discuss in depth the ADV object model and its feasibility for describing static and dynamic aspects of multimedia user interfaces. We finally introduce design patterns and present some simple patterns together with real examples taken from well-known multimedia applications, including Web applications. Some further work is also discussed.