Modelling Feature Interactions in Mobile Phones

A modern mobile phone supports many features: voice and data calls, text messaging, phonebook, calendar, WAP browsing, games, etc. All these features are packaged into a handset with a small display and a special purpose keypad. The limited user interface and the intertwining of logically separate features cause problems in the development of the UI software for mobile phones. In this paper, we look at the problem of feature interaction in the UI of Nokia's handsets. We present a categorization of feature interactions and describe our approach to modelling feature interaction patterns that uses explicit behavioural models of features and interactive graphical simulation. We use Coloured Petri Nets as the modelling language.