Engineering Annotations: A Generic Framework for Gluing Design Artefacts of Interactive Systems

Abstract

Along the design process of interactive system multiple intermediate artefacts (such as user interface prototypes, task models, dialog models?) are created, tested, revised, and improved until the development team produces a full-fledged system. However, relevant information for describing the design solution and/or supporting design decisions (such as rational about the design, decisions made, recommendations, etc.) are not explicitly captured in the models/artefacts, hence the need for annotations. Many approaches argue against information duplication to increase maintainability of the artefacts. Nonetheless, annotations created on one artefact are usually relevant to other artefacts/models. So that, there is a need for tools and techniques to coordinate annotations across artefacts/models which is the contribution of the present work. In this paper, we propose a model-based approach that was conceived to handle annotations in a systematic way along the development process of interactive systems. As part of the solution, we propose an annotation model built upon the W3C's Web Annotation Data Model. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated by means of a tool suite featuring a plugin, which has been deployed and tested over the multi-artefacts. The overall approach is illustrated on the design of an interactive cockpit application performing two design iterations. The contribution brings two main benefits for interactive systems engineering: i) it presents a generic pattern for integrating information in multiple usually heterogenous artefacts throughout the design process of interactive systems; and ii) it highlights the need for tools helping to rationalize and to document the various artefacts and the related decisions made during interactive systems design.