Workshop on Formal Specification of User Interfaces

Introduction

As user interfaces become more complex it becomes more important to communicate among the interface designers, developers, users and customers the look and functionality of the interface. This communication of the user interface is done through a specification. Often interface designers use informal or ad hoc techniques for defining the interface which are incomplete and/or ambiguous which causes developers, users and customers to interpret them differently.

Specifications for user interfaces are often given through prototypes or other non-formal specification techniques. Using a prototype to specify a user interface to a programmer would be a lot like an architect giving a model of a building to a contractor as the only description as to what to build. The results would be unpredictable and it is doubtful that the customers would get what they thought they were getting.

Without a complete, thorough and understandable specification technique, misunderstandings will develop and incomplete or invalid user interfaces will result. No matter how usable an interface design is,, if the design is not well communicated to the developer the result may be unusable. A well specified user interfaces can also help designers to discover inconsistencies and usability problems before the interface is developed saving time and money. This is why specifying user interfaces using a formal technique is important.

For non-user interface software there are many specification techniques that are commonly used: entity relation diagrams for modeling data, structure charts for functional decomposition, and several object orient specification techniques for describing class hierarchy and communication. There are also many formal techniques available for specifying the look and functionality of graphical user interfaces, though in practice these specification techniques are rarely used. The result is development of user interfaces that are different than what was intended by the designer or envisioned by the customer and higher costs for detection and correction of usability problems.

WORKSHOP GOALS

The goals of the workshop are to bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss:

1. Issues and problems surrounding current specification techniques.
2. Successes and failures in specification projects.
3. How current techniques could be improved.
4. Areas where current research should be focusing.

Through this workshop it is hoped that better techniques for specifying user interfaces can be developed.

PLANNED ACTIVITIES

The workshop will start with each participant giving a brief example of the types of specifications they are currently using or have developed. From these presentations and further discussion a taxonomy of techniques will be compiled and categorized. Participants will then form into small groups to do a small specification using different techniques and to discuss the merits and shortcomings of their assigned specifications.

RESULTS

Results of the workshop will include:

1. A taxonomy of current specification techniques.
2. A list of areas where current techniques fall short.
3. A list of ideas on how current techniques could be improved.

The results will be summarized in a report to be CHI bulletin after the workshop.