KMad - ASUR
Contributors
- Main contributor: S. Charfi
- Other contributors:
E. Dubois, R. Bastide, D.L. Scapin
Overview
Mixed Interactive Systems are based on the fusion of physical and digital worlds. Because of this fusion, multiple objects take part in the user task. Furthermore, the continuous use of digital and physical objects has an impact on the interaction and its dynamic, thus creating new issues in terms of design.
Developing a design process suitable for MIS is an issue for HCI research. To enrich the design approaches dedicated to MIS, we are interested in two complementary design aspects:
- the description of the global user activity and dynamics aspects of mixed interactive situations;
- the description of mixed interaction in a way that takes into account the heterogeneity and richness of MIS.
These two elements are already partly addressed by specific models such as sequence
diagrams or task models for the former, and dialog models or mixed interaction models
for the latter.
The goal of this work is to explore and characterize the articulation of
task models with mixed interaction model to contribute to the development of a
MIS design process, following a Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach.
For this, we initially chose a notation of each model:
- K-MAD for task modelling and,
- ASUR for mixed interaction modelling.
Illustration
A complete and progressive illustration is presentend in the paper published at the international Workshop TAMODIA'07.Rules
Rules for coherence
A first set of 4 rules have been identified on the basis of the analysis of the two metamodels: the goal is to identify concepts that are expressesd in both models. Therefore, these rules highlight articulatory elements between the metamodels and constitute a basis to ensure the coherence of a given task model and an associated ASUR model.
Briefly, these rules are related to four differents concepts:
- L1) task:
- L2) objects:
- L3) user:
- L4) expression, constraints
Rules for transitions: WHEN
These rules are useful for defining the boundaries of the K-MAD model to transform.
Indeed, K-MAD describes the task in a global way by integrating it in the user activity,
while ASUR carries out a description of a specific atomic task.
The purpose of the study of the border between K-MAD and ASUR is to adapt the
type of description according to the level of granularity considered.
Since ASUR considers that one task involves a unique user and a unique object of the task,
we establish here two rules to define this border.
- R1) a unique user: a set of KMAD subtasks involving only one user is a candidate to a translation into an ASUR diagram.
- R2) a unique task object: a set of KMAD subtasks involving only one task object is a candidate to a translation into an ASUR diagram. A task object is the object that constitutes the real focus of the task, the object without which the task does not exist.
Rules for transitions: HOW
This set of rules is useful to establish correspondences between an existing K-MAD model and an ASUR model. These rules can be applied to a K-MAD sub-tree, a leaf or a "hollow tree", depending on the result of the application of rules R1 and R2.
Their use in a design context transform a K-MAD tree into an ASUR model or a partial ASUR model, i.e. an incomplete ASUR model.
Rules of this kind are related to five different KMad concepts for which equivalences in ASUR are expressed
- R3) Equivalence of decomposition
- R4) Equivalence of object
- R5) Equivalence of user's task
- R6) Equivalence of system task
- R7) Equivalence of interactive task
Applying these rules supports the definition of a part of the ASUR model. Further design decisions has to be taken by the designer and are based on the ASUR characterisitcs, a set of ASUR relatinships that are not resulting from a direct KMAD equivalence, ...
On-going work
The goal is now to demonstrate how these transformations can serve as a basis to apply further linking rules between a task analysis and an interaction model of Mixed Interactive Systems, to help in the design of such systems.