Semi-Automated Linking of User Interface Design Artifacts

User centered design involves the creation of design artifacts such as task and architecture models. It is increasingly accepted that such artifacts cannot effectively be created separately, but instead coevolve incrementally, so that information obtained from the development of one artifact contributes to the development of the others. In user interface development, different people with different backgrounds typically participate in the development of these artifacts. Consequently, communication is important for coevolution. This research demonstrates how different design artifacts can be linked semi-automatically. We illustrate this technique using Adligo, a computer-based tool for generating links between the User Action Notation (UAN) task model and the Clock architectural model. Our results show that in two case studies, we were able to generate 90% of possible links with error rate of 0% to 12% with limited human assistance.