Resumen de Distributable user interfaces
Pedro González Villanueva
Computer systems have evolved considerably in a short period of time, and, so, we can talk nowadays about Personal Devices instead of Personal Device. This is due to the wide variety of devices that we use today, because technology has advanced to meet the needs of people, such as being in touch, being connected at any time, having a device adapted to every circumstance and performing any task from any of our devices. With such a wide range of devices at our disposal, there is the possibility that the user interface can be divided, composed, moved, copied or cloned among different devices running the same or different operating systems. These new ways of handling the user interface are known as Distributed User Interfaces (DUI). However, there is a wide variety of definitions relating to this concept and sometimes they turn to be contradictory. In addition, the authors refer to the same concept with different names, and there is neither a clear, detailed and formal definition of DUI, nor the terms which make up the DUI concept are clear-cut. Therefore, one of the main objectives of this thesis is to present a new formal definition of the DUI concept, and to propose a definition of a new concept coined as Distributable User Interface (DeUI). Another main goal of the thesis is the design and implementation of a framework which is able to make tangible the new DeUIs concept. Finally, it proposes an extension of the quality model to support the features of DeUIs. Content of this research To achieve these aims, at the beginning it is performed an analysis of previous works framed within the field of Distributed User Interfaces, Migratory User Interfaces and Coupled Displays.This analysis highlights the diversity of definitions, as well as the contradictions and ambiguities found in them. In parallel with the analysis of previous works, it is performed an experimental process to implement the concepts collected during the analysis. This process consists in the development of a set of prototypes which are classified by types of application (educational, tourist, or collaborative). In this experimental phase, it intends to analyze the primitive concept of DUI, gain experience, detect the most common problems when we work with this type of system and meet the challenges in the development of applications which are distributed in an ecosystem of interconnected devices. After the analysis of the previous works and the process of experimentation, it presents the redefinition of the DUI concept and introduces the new DeUI concept. To this end, it proposes a metamodel using MOF enriched with restrictions in OCL. The metamodel allows to represent any user interface. Thus, it allows to automatically classify it as well as to calculate the possible states that the user interfacecan reach. Once the new DeUI concept is presented and defined, a framework called Proxywork to support Web-based DeUIs is proposed. This framework is a proxy which transforms any Web Application into a Web Application with a distributable user interface, at the time in which it is requested through the browser. This framework is the first that enables the interaction in a DeUIs environment. Finally, it proposes a valid extension of quality in the use of models for DeUI, because the quality model does not take into account DeUI characteristics in the definition of metrics. To validate this extension of quality in use, two case studies implemented through Proxywork are evaluated. Conclusion This thesis proposes a new reference model that defines the distribution of user interfaces. This reference model allows us to classify them depending on the division and distribution aspects. Furthermore, the reference model allows us to identify all possible states that a user interface can reach at any point of its execution. The research work developed in this thesis resulted in 38 scientific publications. One of them corresponds to a Q2 journal article and two more publications correspond to Q3 journals, according to the Journal Citation Report. More than 50% of the articles have been published in International Conferences.
