Graceful Degradation of User Interfaces as a Design Method for Multiplatform Systems

This paper introduces and describes the notion of graceful degradation as a method for supporting the design of user interfaces for multiplatform systems when the capabilities of each platform are very different. The approach is based on a set of transformational rules applied to a single user interface designed for the less constrained platform. A major concern of the graceful degradation approach is to guarantee maximal continuity between the platform specific versions of the user interface. In order to guarantee the continuity property, a priority ordering between rules is proposed. That ordering permits the rules with the smallest impact on the multiplatform system continuity to be applied first.