User interface specification using an enhanced spreadsheet model

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a new interactive environment for user interface specification which is based on an enhanced spreadsheet model of computation. This environment allows sophisticated graphical user interfaces with dynamic feedback to be implemented with little or no explicit programming. Its goal is to support user interface specification by nonprogramming experts in human factors, visual design, or the application domain. In addition, the system is designed to allow sophisticated end-users to modify and customize their own interfaces. The system is based on a data flow model of computation. This model is presented to the interface designer in the form of a spreadsheet enhanced with new constructs for easier programming and reuse. These constructs include an improved interactive programming environment, a prototype-instance-based inheritance system, support for composition, abstraction, and customization using indirect references, the addition of support for graphical inputs and outputs, and support for the encapsulation of application data structures and routines within system objects.

REFERENCES

• 1: Bowen Alpern , Alan Carle , Barry Rosen , Peter Sweeney , Kenneth Zadeck, Graph attribution as a specification paradigm, Proceedings of the third ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN software engineering symposium on Practical software development environments, p.121-129, November 28-30, 1988, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
• 2: Alfi'IqRN, B., CARl,E, A., ROSEN, B., SWEENEY, P., AND ZADECK, K 1987. Incremental evaluation of altribuled graphs. IBM Res. Rep. RC 13205, Oct.
• 3: AI'I'I,E ('{)MI'I!'rER IN('. 1987. HyperCard User's Guide. Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, Ca.
• 4: A. Borning, Defining constraints graphically, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.137-143, April 13-17, 1986, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
• 5: Alan Borning, The Programming Language Aspects of ThingLab, a Constraint-Oriented Simulation Laboratory, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.3 n.4, p.353-387, Oct. 1981 [doi>10.1145/357146.357147]
• 6: Alan Borning , Robert Duisberg, Constraint-based tools for building user interfaces, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.5 n.4, p.345-374, Oct. 1986 [doi>10.1145/27623.29354]
• 7: Alan Borning , Robert Duisberg , Bjorn Freeman-Benson , Axel Kramer , Michael Woolf, Constraint hierarchies, Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications, p.48-60, October 04-08, 1987, Orlando, Florida, United States
• 8: Luca Cardelli, Building user interfaces by direct manipulation, Proceedings of the 1st annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User Interface Software, p.152-166, October 17-19, 1988, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/62402.62428]
• 9: Luca Cardelli , Peter Wegner, On understanding types, data abstraction, and polymorphism, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.17 n.4, p.471-523, Dec. 1985 [doi>10.1145/6041.6042]
• 10: Allen Cypher, EAGER: programming repetitive tasks by example, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Reaching through technology, p.33-39, April 27-May 02, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States [doi>10.1145/108844.108850]
• 11: Pierre Deransart , Martin Jourdan , Bernard Lorho, Attribute grammars: definitions, systems and bibliography, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., New York, NY, 1988
• 12: R. A. Duisberg, Animated graphical interfaces using temporal constraints, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.131-136, April 13-17, 1986, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
• 13: ISE'IIF:{,~. (}. AND !.EMKI':, iX. (~ 1988. Construction kits and design environments: Steps toa,ards hum~m probhqn-domain communication. Human (?ompt,'t. Inter. 3, 3 h/uly Sept.}, 179 222
• 14: Bjorn N. Freeman-Benson , John Maloney , Alan Borning, An incremental constraint solver, Communications of the ACM, v.33 n.1, p.54-63, Jan. 1990 [doi>10.1145/76372.77531]
• 15: Adele Goldberg , David Robson, Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1983
• 16: Tyson R. Henry , Scott E. Hudson , Gary L. Newell, Integrating gesture and snapping into a user interface toolkit, Proceedings of the 3rd annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User interface software and technology, p.112-122, October 03-05, 1990, Snowbird, Utah, United States [doi>10.1145/97924.97938]
• 17: Ralph D. Hill, The abstraction-link-view paradigm: using constraints to connect user interfaces to applications, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.335-342, May 03-07, 1992, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/142750.142828]
• 18: Scott E. Hudson, Incremental attribute evaluation: a flexible algorithm for lazy update, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.13 n.3, p.315-341, July 1991 [doi>10.1145/117009.117012]
• 19: Scott E. Hudson , Chen-Ning Hsi, A synergistic approach to specifying simple number independent layouts by example, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.285-292, April 24-29, 1993, Amsterdam, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/169059.169221]
• 20: Scott E. Hudson , Roger King, An Semantic Feedback in the Higgens UIMS, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.14 n.8, p.1188-1206, August 1988 [doi>10.1109/32.7628]
• 21: Scott E. Hudson , Shamim P. Mohamed, Interactive specification of flexible user interface displays, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.8 n.3, p.269-288, July 1990 [doi>10.1145/98188.98201]
• 22: HU~HINS, E. L., HOLI~, J. D., ANI) NORMAN, D.A. 1986. Direct manipulation interfaces. In User Centered Systems Design, D. A. Norman and S. W. Draper, Eds. Lawrence Erlbaum
• 23: Gail E. Kaiser , David Garlan, MELDing data flow and object-oriented programming, Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications, p.254-267, October 04-08, 1987, Orlando, Florida, United States
• 24: KNUTU, D.E. 1971. Semantics of context-free languages: Correction. Math. Syst. Theory J. 5 (Mar.), 95-96.
• 25: KNUTH, D. E. 1968. Semantics of context-free languages. Math. Syst. Theory J. 2 (June), 127-145.
• 26: William Leler, Constraint programming languages: their specification and generation, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1988
• 27: L~:WlS, C.H. 1990. NoPumpG: Creating interactive graphics with spreadsheet machinery. In Visual Programming Environments, E. P. Glinert, Ed. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif.
• 28: Henry Lieberman, Using prototypical objects to implement shared behavior in object-oriented systems, Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications, p.214-223, September 29-October 02, 1986, Portland, Oregon, United States
• 29: Allan MacLean , Kathleen Carter , Lennart Lövstrand , Thomas Moran, User-tailorable systems: pressing the issues with buttons, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Empowering people, p.175-182, April 01-05, 1990, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/97243.97271]
• 30: David L. Maulsby , Ian H. Witten , Kenneth A. Kittlitz, Metamouse: specifying graphical procedures by example, Proceedings of the 16th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.127-136, July 1989
• 31: Joel McCormack , Paul Asente, An overview of the X toolkit, Proceedings of the 1st annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User Interface Software, p.46-55, October 17-19, 1988, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/62402.62407]
• 32: Brad A. Myers, Graphical techniques in a spreadsheet for specifying user interfaces, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Reaching through technology, p.243-249, April 27-May 02, 1991, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States [doi>10.1145/108844.108903]
• 33: Brad A. Myers, User-Interface Tools: Introduction and Survey, IEEE Software, v.6 n.1, p.15-23, January 1989 [doi>10.1109/52.16898]
• 34: Brad A. Myers , William Buxton, Creating highly-interactive and graphical user interfaces by demonstration, ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, v.20 n.4, p.249-258, Aug. 1986
• 35: Brad A. Myers , Dario A. Giuse , Roger B. Dannenberg , David S. Kosbie , Edward Pervin , Andrew Mickish , Brad Vander Zanden , Philippe Marchal, Garnet: Comprehensive Support for Graphical, Highly Interactive User Interfaces, Computer, v.23 n.11, p.71-85, November 1990 [doi>10.1109/2.60882]
• 36: Brad A. Myers , Richard G. McDaniel , David S. Kosbie, Marquise: creating complete user interfaces by demonstration, Proceedings of the INTERCHI '93 conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.293-300, May 1993, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• 37: Greg Nelson, Juno, a constraint-based graphics system, Proceedings of the 12th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.235-243, July 1985
• 38: G. E. Pfaff, User Interface Management Systems, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, 1985
• 39: Thomas Reps , Tim Teitelbaum, The synthesizer generator, Proceedings of the first ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN software engineering symposium on Practical software development environments, p.42-48, April 1984
• 40: Thomas Reps , Tim Teitelbaum , Alan Demers, Incremental Context-Dependent Analysis for Language-Based Editors, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.5 n.3, p.449-477, July 1983 [doi>10.1145/2166.357218]
• 41: Robert W. Scheifler , Jim Gettys, The X window system, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.5 n.2, p.79-109, April 1986 [doi>10.1145/22949.24053]
• 42: Andrew J. Schulert , George T. Rogers , James A. Hamilton, ADM — a dialog manager, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.177-183, April 1985, San Francisco, California, United States
• 43: SHNEIDERMAN, S. 1983. Direct manipulation: A step beyond programming languages. Comput. 16, 8 (Aug.), 57-69.
• 44: SIINEII}I*:RMAN, B. 1982. The future of interactive systems and the emergence of direct manipulation. Beha~'. In{. Tech. 1, 3, 237 256.
• 45: David Ungar , Randall B. Smith, Self: The power of simplicity, Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications, p.227-242, October 04-08, 1987, Orlando, Florida, United States
• 46: B. T. Zanden, Constraint grammars–a new model for specifying graphical applications, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Wings for the mind, p.325-330, March 1989
• 47: Brad Vander Zanden , Brad A. Myers , Dario Giuse , Pedro Szekely, The importance of pointer variables in constraint models, Proceedings of the 4th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.155-164, November 11-13, 1991, Hilton Head, South Carolina, United States [doi>10.1145/120782.120799]
• 48: Nicholas Wilde , Clayton Lewis, Spreadsheet-based interactive graphics: from prototype to tool, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Empowering people, p.153-160, April 01-05, 1990, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/97243.97268]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: User interfaces
      D.2.6 Programming Environments
          Subjects: Interactive environments
      D.2.m Miscellaneous
          Subjects: Rapid prototyping**

General Terms:
Human Factors, Languages

Keywords:
automatic display update, constraint systems, direct manipulation, end-user programming, interface builders, prototype-instance-based inheritance, semantic feedback, user interface management systems