Graceful degradation : a method for designing multiplatform graphical user interfaces
(2006)
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Details
- Authors
- Supervisors
- Vanderdonckt, Jean
- Abstract
- An increasing number of applications can be accessed from a wide range of platforms. Designing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for such applications is a difficult task, implying perpetual trade-offs between the cross-platform consistency and the usability of each platform-specific version of the GUI. We propose an approach called design by graceful degradation as a method of building multiplatform GUIs. Graceful degradation is a model-based, transformational method, which consists in centring the design effort on a "source interface", designed for the least constrained platform, and applying a set of transformation rules to this source interface in order to produce specific interfaces targeted to more constrained platforms. In order to support the approach described above, an original set of transformation rules was gathered and described. Two tools were developed to document the rules and to support their application. The first tool is a knowledge base that structures and organizes the rules. The second tool is a prototype aimed at demonstrating how rules can be applied automatically on a UsiXML specification. Finally, an analysis of users appreciation of user interfaces produced by graceful degradation, in contrast to other methods has been performed.
- Affiliations
