Using a WWW Browser as an Alternative User Interface for
Interactive Applications
Frank Lonczewski, Institute of
Computer Science, Munich University of Technology, 80290 Munich,
Germany
lonczews@informatik.tu-muenchen.de
http://www2.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/persons/lonczews/fralo.html
- Keywords:
- Intelligent User Interfaces, User Guidance, Model-Based Interface Design,
Online Help Systems
1. Introduction
In the project "Generierung intelligenter
Bedienoberflächen" (GIB [1]) we use a WWW browser as an online
help system to guide the user during his work with various interactive
applications. While an application is running a user guidance
component generates help pages on the fly describing operations
the user can actually perform on the user interface.
As these operations can be called directly from
the browser, it can be regarded as an alternative
user interface of the application. First experiences have shown that
especially the unexperienced user prefers to use the
WWW-based user interface because additional information and
orientation help is available there.
2. Generating User Interfaces: A Model-Based Approach
In our project we investigate how the time-consuming development process for
the construction of user interfaces
can be reduced by generating it automatically out of a declarative
description (model) of the properties of an interactive application.
Some advantages of this model-based approach [Fol91, Sze92,
Jan93, Suk93, Bod93, Bal93, Sch94] are:
- by using alternative layout guidelines formulated on basis of
a styleguide [OSF91, SUN89], different user interfaces can be constructed
without modifying the description of the application
- the styleguide-confirmity of the set of user interfaces that can be generated is ensured
- with a description of the tasks that the user can
solve with the interactive application,
a user guidance component can be generated automatically by
analyzing the model and the tasks of the application
3. A User-Guidance Component: PLUG-IN
The user guidance component supports the user while
working with the application by determining the current tasks of the user. If a task
is recognized, a way is searched to solve it, and if such a way can be found,
the user guidance component can help the user by:
- generating dynamical textual online help that describes how the given
task can be accomplished
- generating an animation sequence that simulates the necessary user
interactions to accomplish the given task
PLUG-IN (PLan based User Guidance for Intelligent Navigation) is a
user guidance component that is based on the above described method.
In contrast to other approaches to user guidance [Mor94, Feh93, Thi94],
PLUG-IN generates dynamical online help pages in HTML format that can be
inspected with a WWW browser. Each page is typically divided into four regions
and contains:
- information about the current state of the application from the user's
point of view
- information about the set of possible actions the user can perform in
the current state
- for each of the possible actions: information about the necessary
user interactions to perform the action. If the user selects the
button with the light bulb icon beneath the displayed text
(see example below), PLUG-IN simulates the described
interactions on the user interface with an animation sequence and
generates a new online help page afterwards
- information about further documention material, e.g. references to
a hypertext version of the user manual of the application
As all operations the user can perform on the original user interface can
also be triggered through the WWW browser, it can be regarded as an
alternative user interface of the application. In contrast to the original
user interface the goal of the WWW-based user interface is to guide the
user during the work with the application. The information
displayed helps the user to accomplish a given task.
Furthermore, the user can learn how to interact with the original user
interface through the means of the simulation capabilities of PLUG-IN.
4. An Example: The User Interface of an ISDN Telephone
In our presentation we look at the user interface of an ISDN telephone [Sie92]
generated with our model-based BOSS-system [Sch94] (figure 1).
Depending on the state of the application,
PLUG-IN generates different online help pages. One of these is displayed in
figure 2.
We show how the user solves a complex task (e.g. establishes a conference
with the phone) while only working with the generated online help pages.
Starting with the user interface state shown in figure 1, the user would select
the following action sequence on the dynamical help pages:
start a phone conversation,
dial a telephone number,
start an inquiry,
dial another telephone number,
start a conference.
After the corresponding user interactions are simulated on the user interface
a conference is established.
figure 1
figure 2
- [1]
- This work is supported by Siemens Corporate Research and Development,
Department of Systems Ergonomics and Interaction (ZFE ST SN 51), Munich,
Germany. The translation of GIB in English is
"Generation of Intelligent User Interfaces".
References
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