Verification of Plastic Interactive Systems

Abstract

Interactive systems have largely evolved over the past years. Nowadays, different users can interact with systems on different devices and in different environments. The user interfaces (UIs) are expected to cope with such variety. Plastic UIs have the capacity to adapt to changes in their context of use while preserving usability. Such capability enhances UIs, however, it adds complexity on them. We propose an approach to verifying interactive systems considering this adaptation capability of the UIs. The approach applies two formal techniques: model checking, to the verification of properties over the system model, and equivalence checking, to compare different versions of a UI, thereby identifying different levels of UI equivalence. We apply the approach to a case study in the nuclear power plant domain in which several UI are analyzed, properties are verified, and the level of equivalence between them is demonstrated.