Towards model-driven development of mobile multimodal user interfaces for services

Abstract

We describe a model-driven approach for developing multimodal user interfaces for services that are especially appropriate for mobile consumption. Thereby, we refine an existing service engineering methodology with respective meta-models and provide initial tool support for user experience experts by means of an Eclipse-based, graphical editor implementing model-to-model transformations, consistency checks, and automatic code generation. The resulting runnable UI can either be consumed from a desktop pc as well as from modern smartphones via browser-based, multimodal client applications. This allows for a seamless user experience throughout different devices and situations. Such a client application is linked to a service-oriented, ontology-based dialogue platform that acts as a middleware between the client and the service backend and enables a user to naturally interact with services.