Meta-Modeling and Meta-CASE Tools – A Silver Bullet for Model-Driven HMI Development?

Abstract

Due to the increasing complexity of automotive human-machine interfaces (HMI) the development of appropriate user interfaces requires powerful development processes as well as easy-to-use software tools. However, in comparison to domains like embedded system development suitable software tool kits are missing in the field of HMI development. Actually meta-modeling and domain-specific languages represent many promising beginnings to create non-generic tool support for individual modeling tasks. Therefore, this paper presents a model-driven HMI development process and describes the utilization of visual domain-specific languages in this process. Thereby experiences with using current meta-CASE tools as well as standard office applications for creating electronic specifications are presented. Based on these experiences requirements for future meta-CASE tools are derived. The suggested enhancements could pave the way to increased acceptance of model-driven approaches among HMI developers and could consequently allow for overcoming today’s urging challenges in complex networked development processes.