User Interface Prototyping Based on UML Scenarios and High-Level Petri Nets
Mohammed Elkoutbi6
and Rudolf K. Keller6 
| (6) |
Département d’informatique et de recherche opérationnelle, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3J7, Canada |
Abstract
In this paper, we suggest a requirement engineering process that generates a user interface prototype from scenarios and yields
a formal specification of the system in form of a high-level Petri net. Scenarios are acquired in the form of sequence diagrams
as defined by the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and are enriched with user interface information. These diagrams are transformed
into Petri net specifications and merged to obtain a global Petri net specification capturing the behavior of the entire system.
From the global specification, a user interface prototype is generated and embedded in a user interface builder environment
for further refinement. Based on end user feedback, the input scenarios and the user interface prototype may be iteratively
refined. The result of the overall process is a specification consisting of a global Petri net, together with the generated
and refined prototype of the user interface.
Keywords User interface prototyping - scenario specification - high-level Petri net - Unified Modeling Language
This work is supported by FCAR (Fonds pour la formation des chercheurs et l’aide à la recherche au Québec) and NSERC (National
Sciences and Research Council of Canada).
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