Multi-Path Transformational Development of User Interfaces with Graph Transformations

In software engineering, transformational development is aimed at developing computer systems by transforming a coarse-grained specification of a system to its final code through a series of transformation steps. Transformational development is known to bring benefits such as: correctness by construction, explicit mappings between development steps, and reversibility of transformations. No comparable piece exists in the literature that provides a formal system applying transformational development in the area of user interface engineering. This chapter defines such a system. For this purpose, a mathematical system for expressing specifications and transformation rules is introduced. This system is based on graph transformations. The problem of managing the transformation rules is detailed, e.g., how to enable a developer to access, define, extend, restrict or relax, test, verify, and apply appropriate transformations. A tool supporting this development paradigm is also described and exemplified. Transformational development, applied to the development of user interfaces of interactive systems, allows reusability of design knowledge used to develop user interfaces and fosters incremental development of user interfaces by applying alternative transformations.