Workshop on Future Standards for Model-Based User Interfaces

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The workshop venue is in the centre of Rome, and although there isn't a recommended hotel, you should be able to choose from the many hotels nearby.

Workshop participants will have to go to the main entrance at CNR in Piazzale Aldo Moro 7, Rome. There they should give an identity card and will receive a badge. With the badge they should move to the entrance in another side of the building. Inside that entrance there will be a gate that they can pass only with the badge. Then, they will have to go up to the second floor. The workshop will be in room “Seconda Pentagono”.

Name, organization and contact details
A statement of interest (see requirements for participation)
Whether or not you wish to make a presentation during the workshop
Whether or not you are willing to serve on a panel during the workshop
Any other agenda suggestions

Background

Web application developers face increasing difficulties due to wide variations in device capabilities, in the details of the standards they support, the need to support assistive technologies for accessibility, the demand for richer user interfaces, the suites of programming languages and libraries, and the need to contain costs and meet challenging schedules during the development and maintenance of applications.

Research work on model-based design of context-sensitive user interfaces has sought to address the challenge of reducing the costs for developing and maintaining multi-target user interfaces through a layered architecture that separates out different concerns:

Application task models, data and meta-data
Abstract Interface (device and modality independent, e.g. select 1 from N)
Concrete Interface (device and/or modality dependent, e.g. use of radio buttons)
Implementation on specific devices with wide variations in hardware and software capabilities (e.g. HTML+JavaScript, SVG, Java, .NET or Flash)

This architecture focuses on design and separates off the implementation challenges posed by specific delivery channels. The architecture enables developers to work top-down or bottom-up. The implementation or "Final-UI" can be generated automatically, subject to developer preferences. This includes the notion of UI skins where a particular style is applied to the models defined by the Concrete UI.

High level development suites can be provided to shield developers from the underlying representations. For example, a data model could be manipulated as a diagram, while the user interface could be defined via drag and drop operations together with editing values in property sheets. The development suite is responsible for maintaining the mappings between layers and verifying their consistency. Developers can choose to provide alternative mappings as needed to address different delivery contexts (contexts of use).

During the last year the W3C Model-Based UI XG has evaluated research on model-based user interfaces, including end-to-end models that extend beyond a single Web page, and has assessed its potential as a framework for developing context-sensitive Web applications.

W3C invites you to attend a workshop to discuss the challenges and benefits of Model-Based approaches, to hear the main results achieved by the Incubator Group, and to facilitate a discussion about the next steps to be taken in the area of open standards for Model-Based User Interfaces.

Workshop participants will collectively help to identify opportunities and challenges for new open standards in the area, particularly concerning the semantics and syntaxes of task, abstract and concrete user interface models. In addition, workshop participants will have the opportunity to discuss the role of model-based approaches in relation to other standards, for instance, XForms, ANSI/CEA-2018 and MDA, and the relationship to work on standards for Web delivery including HTML5 and browser scripting APIs.

Workshop Goals

The goal of this workshop is to discuss the main results of the Model-Based UI XG and to identify opportunities and challenges for new open standards in the area of Model-Based User Interfaces:

What are the main benefits for Model-Based UI?
What are the next steps to be taken concerning standardization?
Is it feasible and opportune to start an standardization process now?
What are the technologies that call for standardization?
What needs to be standardized, models, syntaxes, both?
What companies and institutions are interested in participating in the process?
What liaisons need to be established?
What is the roadmap to be followed?

The workshop also aims at creating a community of interested parties, with a view to defining the charter of a W3C Working Group on the topic.

The main outcome of the workshop will be the publication of a report that will serve as a guide for further work in W3C.

Scope of the Workshop

The workshop is aimed at companies and Academic institutions interested in the standardization of Model-Based User Interface Development.

Who should attend?

You should consider participating in this workshop if you are in one of the following communities:

Model-Based (or Model-Driven) UI technology vendors and developers, including open source projects.
Companies that own solutions for the development of multi-target, context-sensitive, adaptive User Interfaces.
Companies seeking to exploit Model-Based Approaches internally.
Software vendors or open source projects that currently offer XML-based languages for the description of user interfaces targeted to the desktop environment.
Government organizations seeking to the standardization of UI development.
Academic researchers with an interest in Model-Based UI Development.

Requirements for Participation

Statements of interest will be the basis for the discussions at the workshop. Each organization or individual wishing to participate must submit a statement of interest by email to <team-mbuiws-submit@w3.org> by 20 April 2010.

Statements of interest should:

Explain the participant's interest in the workshop
Explain their view point
Include concrete examples of their suggestions

Statements of interest should be written in English. Examples may be illustrated with non-English languages with an English explanation. All submissions should be 1 to 5 pages in length, although they may link to longer versions or appendices. Allowed formats are valid HTML or XHTML, PDF, or plain text. Papers in any other format (including invalid HTML/XHTML) may be returned with a request for correct formatting.

Statements of interest will be published on the public Web page of the workshop. Submitting a statement of interest comprises a default recognition of these terms for publication. The program committee reserves the right to decline submissions that are not deemed relevant to the workshop's stated goals.

The Program Committee will ask the authors of particularly salient submissions to explicitly present their position at the workshop to foster discussion. Presenters will be asked to make the slides of the presentation available on the workshop home page in HTML, PDF, or plain text.

See the schedule below for submission and registration deadlines.

Topics:

This workshop will focus on opportunities and challenges for :

A survey of existing UI design tools and opportunities for introducing Model-Based solutions.
Demonstrating the advantages of Model-Based approaches and their application to key scenarios.
Standardization of Model-Based and Model-Driven Conceptual Frameworks for the development of context-sensitive User Interfaces, e.g. the Cameleon Reference Framework.
Standardization of the semantics and syntaxes (e.g. XML syntaxes) of the different models (Task, Abstract UI, Concrete UI).
Relationship and complementarities with existing standards (ANSI/CEA-2018, MDA, XForms, HTML, Browser scripting APIs, ...),
Relationship between Model-based approaches and current work on UI controls and Ajax library APIs for use in design-time and run-time environments.
The role of Model-Based approaches for improving the quality and reducing errors in application user interfaces.
The role of Model-Based approaches for improving the accessibility of application user interfaces
The role of Model-Based approaches for reducing the costs of developing and delivering Web application user interfaces in the face of wide variations in devices, modes of interaction and software.
The role of Model-Based approaches for nomadic user interfaces where users switch devices in the midst of using an application.
Relationship between Model-Based approaches and the current state of the practice, for example, XML languages for the description of concrete user interfaces for the desktop environment.

Participation:

Participation will be governed by the following:

To ensure maximum diversity, the number of participants per organization will be limited.
W3C membership is not required to participate in this workshop.
Workshop sessions and documents will be in English.
Attendees are required to submit a statement of interest.

Workshop Organization

Workshop Chairs:

Dave Raggett, W3C Model-Based UI XG Chair.
Fabio Paternò, CNR-ISTI

Program Committee:

The program committee consists of:

Simone DJ Barbosa, PUC-Rio
José Manuel Cantera, Telefónica I+D
Juan Manuel Gonzalez Calleros, BCHI-UCL
Pertti Huuskonen, Nokia Research
Rotan Hanrahan, Mobileaware
Gerrit Meixner, DKFI
Fabio Paternò, CNR-ISTI
Jaroslav Pullmann, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
Dave Raggett, W3C
Carmen Santoro, CNR-ISTI
Daniel Schwabe, PUC-Rio
Richard Schwerdtfeger, IBM
Noi Sukaviriya, IBM
Jean Vanderdonckt, BCHI-UCL
Petri Vuorimaa, Aalto University School of Science and Technology
Thomas Ziegert, SAP Research

The program committee will review statements of interest to select which people to invite to give presentations, and to come up with the workshop agenda.

Schedule:

The workshop program will run from 9am to 5 pm on Thursday, 13 May and Friday 14 May 2010.

Venue:

CNR - Piazzale Aldo Moro 7 - Roma, Italy.