Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) make software easy to use by providing the user with visual controls. Therefore, correctness of GUI’s code is essential to the correct execution of the overall software. Models can help in the evaluation of interactive applications by allowing designers to concentrate on its more important aspects. This paper describes our approach to reverse engineer an abstrac...

One of the advantages of using formal methods in the design of human–computer interfaces is the possibility to reason about user interface properties. Model checking techniques provide a useful support to this end. This paper discusses the possibilities of verifying the properties of user interfaces and related problems, such as when the dialogue specification has an infinite number of states. ...

A visual speller is a brain–computer interface that empowers users with limitedmotor functionality to input text into a computer by measuring their electroencephalographic responses to visual stimuli. Most prior research on visual spellers has focused on input of alphabetic text. Adapting a speller for other types of segmental or syllabic script is straightforward because such scripts comprise ...

This paper argues that decision theory can be used to identify diierent attitudes towardsùsability engineering'. The advocates of formal methods and ethnomethodology argue that initial investments ooer substantial beneets to subsequent development. For other groups, high cost techniques are seen to ooer few rewards for interface design. The following pages exploit utility curves to represent th...

The lack of methodological support for reuse has been identiied as one of the major causes why software developers can not take full advantage of reuse pay oos such as software productivity , quality, and cost improvement. There is, therefore, a need for explicit deenitions about how to practice reuse as part of the development process. These deenitions include models and properties of reuse te...

Modern passenger aircraft are highly automated, and problems at the interface between the automation and the pilot are implicated in several accidents. I use a simple example taken from the autopilot of a widely used aircraft type to demonstrate how formal methods can be used to analyze some aspects of these interfaces, and to expose potential problems. This example serves to illustrate the wid...

Component adaptation is widely recognised to be one of the crucial problems in Component-Based Software Engineering. We present a formal methodology for adapting components with mismatching interaction behaviours. The three main ingredients of the methodology are: (1) The inclusion of behaviour specifications in component interfaces, (2) a simple, high-level notation for expressing adaptor spec...

EmotionsOnto is a generic ontology for describing emotions and their detection and expression systems taking contextual and multimodal elements into account. The ontology is proposed as a way to develop an easily computerizable and flexible formal model. Moreover, it is based on the Web Ontology Language (OWL) standard, which also makes ontologies easily shareable and extensible. Once formalize...

We have used formal methods technology to investigate software and user interface design issues that may induce use error in medical devices. Our approach is based on mathematical models that capture safety concerns related to the use of a device. We analysed nine commercial medical devices from six manufacturers with our approach, and precisely identified 30 design issues. All identified issue...

UI model discovery is a lightweight formal method in which a model of an interactive system is automatically discovered by exploring the system’s state space, simulating the actions of a user; such models are then amenable to automatic analysis targetting structural usability concerns. This paper specifies UI model discovery in some detail, providing a formal, generic and language-neutral API a...