Tool-supported interpreter-based user interface architecture for ubiquitous computing

With the upcoming era of Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) new demands on software engineering will arise. Fundamental needs for constructing user interfaces (UIs) in the context of UbiComp were identified and the subsumed results of a survey with special focus on model based user interface development environments (MB-UIDEs) are presented in this paper. It can be stated, that none of the examined systems is suitable for all the needs. Therefore a new architecture based on the Arch model is proposed, that supports the special UbiComp requirements. This layered architecture provides the desired flexibility with respect to different implementation techniques and UI modalities. It was implemented in a user interface development environment called Vesuf. Its usability was approved within the Global Info project [20], where heterogeneous services had to be integrated in a web portal.