Expression of interest in participating in the Workshop

Daniel Schwabe

Tecweb Lab, Dept. of Informatics, PUC-Rio

Participant's interest

We have been researching and developing Model-Based design methods for hypermedia applications even before the advent of the Web. Such methods were later extended to encompass Web applications, and in particular the Semantic Hypermedia Design Method (SHDM) is the latest incarnation. Within the method, there is a specific part that deals with Interface Models, and how these relate to other models that together define the Web application. Additonal details about SHDM can be found at SHDM.

Viewpoint

We feel that, in spite of several models referring to concepts such as "navigation" and "abstract interfaces", they often hide quite different meanings, which need to be better characterized. In addition, when referring to "Abstract Interfaces", the actual level of abstraction is again quite variable, and a discussion of an appropriate level is warranted. Furthermore, with the advent of Rich Internet Applications and their interfaces, there is the need to adequately model their behavior (and generate implementations from these models), rather than just implementing it directly via code. Since Human Computer interfaces relate to communication with humans, a rhetorical component becomes necessary, especially to control the temporal aspects of the abstract interface rendition into concrete interfaces. This rhetorical model component could also be used to automatically derive spatial constraints (i.e., layout) as well.