Knowledge-based Support for the User Interface Design Process

Sunday, May 7 and Monday Morning, May 8

User interface design is a knowledge-intensive task, and the amount of knowledge to be mastered is prohibitive. Numerous techniques have been tried to provide knowledge support to the user interface designer. Some examples include passive knowledge repositories, often containing design examples; active design support in the form of critiquing or automatic-design modules; and dynamic restriction of the design space by means of constraints.

There is, however, no unified understanding of how these techniques relate to each other and tothe design task. The goals of this workshop areto explore the strengths and weaknesses of the different techniques and to investigate how these techniques can be combined to provide useful design support. Examples of questions to be addressed include (a) What type of support is useful in different design situations? (b) How do the different techniques address problems such as laying out the interface, designing dynamic behavior, and choosing media? and (c) What requirements does a combination of techniques pose for the knowledge representation?

The workshop uses design scenarios, focus groups, and plenary discussions to produce a conceptual map of knowledge-based, user-interface design support. We expect to identify promising directions for future research. Our results will be relevant for researchers as well as practitioners.

This one-and-a-half day workshop is limited to 16 participants.

Contact:

Kumiyo Nakakoji
Department of Computer Science
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-430 USA
E-mail: kumiyo@cs.colorado.edu
Tel: +1 303 492 3912 
Fax: +1 303 492 2844