Exploring the effectiveness of learning UI design by feedback ENable user interface simulation: the FENIkS approach.

The Information Technology industry is characterized by a heterogeneity of platforms, devices, modalities, users with different characteristics and skills, among others, factors which have been considered as challenges to deal with when developing software. Resultantly, there is a growing number of highly complex software applications with a large variety of features.

In particular the heterogeneity of platforms and user expectations e.g. in terms of user friendliness have led to the fact that the User Interface (UI) of an application is becoming one of the most important elements to consider when developing applications since it connects the end-users to the functionality of the software. Therefore, any degree of automation in this area has clear benefits.

The complexity and large variety of features typically requires an increased development time. Automation of software application development, e.g. through Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) has been considered as a way to reduce the development time while being able to better address issues such as platform heterogeneity, interoperability, and evolution through the use of transformations rather than manual coding. The design step remains nevertheless the most important first step in such approach, as models are needed to generate code from.

At the same time, UI design is considered a difficult process. And, although the need of usable UIs and of integration between the UI and the logic of the application is not new, the learning support of current software development environments to prepare professionals to design and develop good user interfaces is lacking.  

This dissertation presents a solution to improve the learning of the functional aspects of User Interface design while generating the UI integrated to the logic of the application. The solution, the didactic environment Feedback ENable user Interface Simulation (FENIkS), supports learners in coping with the challenge of designing a software system and its UI while being compliant to good practices. This research has shown how the approach can be put into practice and how it achieves its goal.

FENIkS extends previous work (a MDE didactic tool to support the learning of conceptual modeling) to provide a fully-implemented and integrated simulation tool for the teaching of UI design and application development at once. With this tool, the learner defines conceptual models to describe the business logic behind the interactive software system, and augments these with a presentation model to capture UI requirements. This tool provides simulation by automatically generating a full working prototype of the described system in an integrated environment that allows the learner testing the system against its requirements. FENIkS provides teaching support that consists of simulation with prototype generation enhanced with feedback. While designing the UI, the learner receives feedback about how some UI design principles are applied through the options the learner selects. The complete generation of the UI and application code allows validating user requirements against the prototype behavior and the resulting UI. Thus, necessary changes in the models can be made in less time while maintaining the link between the UI and the application.

FENIkS improves the UI designing and application development by letting the learner tests the models incrementally. The feedback allows understanding how the UI design principles are applied and immediately shows their effects on the final UI.

An experimental evaluation was performed. The tool was evaluated for its perceived usability, perceived usefulness and practical results as a didactic tool. The tool was positively perceived by novice developers and students. They agree the tool helps them to complete their work and has all the expected functionalities. The results of the experimental evaluation with students demonstrated that the tool improve their understanding of UI design principles.