Below, you will find a collection of theses written in the context of the MASP project.

Marco Blumendorf, PhD Thesis, 2009

Abstract:
The increasing popularity of computers in all areas of life raises new challenges for computer scientists and developers in all areas of computing technology. Networked resources form smart environments, that integrate devices and appliances with sensors and actors, and make an ongoing paradigm shift towards ubiquitous computing paradigms visible. With this growing pervasiveness of computing technology, their user interfaces need to transport and hide an increasing complexity. In this work the term Ubiquitous User Interface (UUI) is coined to denote user interfaces that support multiple users, using different devices to interact via multiple modalities with a set of applications in various contexts. The creation of such user interfaces raises new requirements for their development and runtime handling.

The utilization of models and modeling technologies is a promising approach to handle the increasing complexity of current software. This thesis describes a model-based approach that combines executable user interface models with a runtime architecture to handle UUIs. Executable models identify the common building blocks of dynamic, self-contained, models that integrate design-time and runtime aspects. Bridging the gap between design- and runtime models allows the utilization of design information for runtime decisions and reasoning about interaction and presentation semantics. Based on the concept of executable models a set of metamodels is introduced, that picks-up design-time features of current user interface description languages and integrates additional runtime aspects like state information and dynamic behavior. The defined metamodels range from context-, service- and task- to abstract- and concrete interaction model and aim at the definition of the aspects of UUIs on different levels of abstraction. Mappings between the models allow the exchange of information for state synchronization and data exchange.

The integration of the concepts into the Multi-Access Service Platform as an architecture for the interpretation of the models, provides a novel approach to utilize user interface models for the creation and handling of Ubiquitous User Interfaces at runtime. It provides components to support shaping according to interaction device specifics, multimodal interaction, user interface distribution and the dynamic adaptation of the user interface to context information. The integration of the stateful user interface models with the outside world is addressed by the projection of the model state to UUI presentations and the stimulation of state transitions within the models, based on user input. Integrating distribution, fusion and adaptation models bridges real-world needs and the modeled user interface definition. Various interaction devices are supported to convey the internal state of the user interface model via a multimodal presentation, distributed across multiple interaction resources. The implementation of the runtime architecture has been integrated into a smart home environment as part of the Service Centric Home project and served as implementation platform for different multimodal home applications. Case studies have been conducted, to evaluate the developed concepts. The realization of various executable models supported their combination into a complex net of models at runtime and allowed to prove the feasibility of the developed approach.

A Method for the User-centered and Model-based Development of Interactive Applications

Sebastian Feuerstack, PhD Thesis, 2008

Abstract:
Nowadays, internet access is available in nearly every situation, but applications fail to adapt to the user's situation. Applications are still developed for a certain device and a specific context-of-use and adaption happens on the user's end-devices without taking into account the applications' semantics. This results in applications that cannot be convenient accessed on a device that the application's designer has not explicitly considered. Currently most of the internet services cannot be comfortably accessed by today's mobile device's browsers that are often only able to scale down images or offer enhanced scrolling capabilities. Further context-of-use adaptations or support for additional modalities have only be realized for very specific applications like for instance in-car navigation systems.

This dissertation research focuses on creating a method for interactive software design that implements a strong user-centric perspective and requires testing steps in all phases of the development process enabling to concentrate on the end-users' requirements and indentifying how the users' way of thinking can be considered as the basic way of controlling the application. The method involves the creation of various models starting by very abstract models and continously substantiating abstract into more concrete models. All of the models are specified in a declarative manner and can be directly interpreted to form the interactive application at run-time. Therefore all design semantics can be accessed and manipulated to realize context-of-use adaptations at run-time. By the abstract-to-detail modeling approach that includes deriving one model to form the basis of the next, more concrete model, consistency can be archieved if an application needs to be designed to support different platforms and modalities. The method is supported by tools for all steps of the development process to support the designer in specifying and deriving the declarative models. Additionally all tools support the generation of prototypes and examples enabling the developer testing intermediary results during the design process and to consider users' feedback as often and early as possible.

The method is complemented by an associated run-time architecture, the Multi-Access Service Platform that implements a model-agent concept to make all of the design models alive to bridge the actual gap between design-time and run-time of an interactive model-based system. Since the run-time-architecture is able to synchronize changes between the different models it can be used on the one hand to manipulate a running system in order to prototype and test new features and on the other hand it enables to personalize a running system instance to a certain user's requirements. The architecture considers the tools of the method and enables the designer to deploy changes of the models directly into the running system.

In the past a lot of user interface description languages (UIDL) have been proposed to specify an application on different model abstraction levels. As of now, most of these proposals have not received a broad acceptance in the research community where most research groups implement their own UIDLs. Both, the method and the run-time architecture abstract from a specifc UIDL but pay attantion to the actual types of abstraction levels that have been identified during the state of the art analysis. Instead of proposing yet another UIDL, the work concentrates on identifying and realizing missing aspects of existing UIDLs (1), in enhancing well accepted approaches (2), and by introducing alternative aproaches that have not been proposed so far (3). Regarding (1) the work describes an approach for a layout model that specifies the user interface layout by statements containing interpretations of the other design models and can be designed and tested by using an interactive tool. Specifying a task model has been widely accepted to implement a user-centric development process. Thus, we enhance the ConcurTaskTree notation to support run-time interpretation and explicit domain model annotations to support our work (2). Finally, the work proposes a different way of specifying an abstract user interface model (3) that is based on a derivation based on a domain model instead of using a task model as the initial derivation source.

A Model Driven Runtime Architecture for Plastic User Interfaces

Grzegorz Lehmann, Diploma Thesis, 2008

Abstract:
The ever-growing complexity of home environments poses a challenge for the User Interface developers, who must cope with more devices, services, features and modalities. Current user interface development approaches failed, as the designers face an overwhelming heterogeneity of interaction resources and need to foresee complex contexts. These difficulties are not compensated by today’s frameworks and thus user interface development is a more and more demanding task. Although a lot of research is performed in the domain of user interfaces, most of the proposed solutions concentrate on UI1 code generation at design time. However, due to the nature of dynamic, heterogeneous environments, a need for more adaptive systems emerged. Furthermore, during the last years multiple User Interface Description Languages (UIDL) have been developed but none has established itself as a standard. The missing consensus seems to support the thesis, that different user interfaces need different UIDLs as no UIDL is powerful enough to describe all user interfaces. Following, an efficient UI framework should not be limited to one UIDL. This diploma thesis deals with the design of a model-based framework for user interface development, that would achieve the desired flexibility. To accomplish this, the envisioned framework will be based on two fundamental features: (1) High fidelity prototyping - the UI designer will be able to see the results of his work instantly, thanks to a runtime system directly connected with the framework. (2) Extensibility through metamodeling - the UI designer will not be bound to the UIDL of the framework, but will be able to customize it through modifications of its metamodels.

Suitability Rating of Devices Based on the Delivered User Interface

Dirk Roscher, Diploma Thesis, 2008

Abstract:
Communication- and information technologies are more and more pervasing our daily life. One of the manifold effects is the emerging number of services providing humans with useful assistance in nearly every aspect of life. Especially in the home environment services can ease our living by supporting us in our daily life. Besides the value offered by a service itself the way users can interact with a service determines its acceptance and ongoing use. But in today’s homes the inhabitants are not provided with the best interaction possible. Nowadays services can only be utilized through the devices understanding the user interface language delivered by the service. Furthermore today’s services typically support only one device at once leaving out many other devices in the current environment of the user which could be additionally used to address further senses of the user and provide an interaction better supporting her needs. And in the home environment many devices like notebooks, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or mobile phones exists which could be used for the improvement. A lot of research is performed to compensate the described drawbacks laying the foundation to utilize several devices at once for an interaction. However users still have no information about the devices they can utilize to interact with a specific service and which combination of devices is most suitable for the interaction. Furthermore during an interaction the environment and/or the needs of the user can change making it useful to adapt the currently used devices. Services on the other side have no possibility at all to reach users to provide her with important information. So services certainly cannot contact the user through the best combination of devices possible. This thesis will overcome these drawbacks by providing users and services with capabilities to utilize the best devices for an upcoming interaction. A “Smart-Delivery-Component” (SDC) is developed which can determine the suitability of a specific interface for the possible device combinations by analyzing the user interface properties, the properties of every device and different types of environment information. In addition the SDC allows users to change the utilized devices to fulfil their needs at all times during an interaction.

Entwicklung eines Frameworks für die situationsbezogene Adaption von Benutzeroberflächen

Veit Schwarze, Diploma Thesis, 2008

Abstract:
Ein immer größerer Teil unseres Alltagslebens spielt sich heute im Internet ab, somit gewinnen die dort hinterlegten Informationen an Bedeutung und damit auch ihre Aufbereitung und Präsentation. Das Internet besteht zurzeit zu einem großen Teil aus statischen Seiten, deren Layout sich meist an gängigen Desktopauflösungen orientiert. Im Heimbereich sind heutzutage aber viele verschiedene Geräte im Einsatz, die mit ihren unterschiedlichen Auflösungen und Eingabemöglichkeiten Probleme bereiten. Im besten Falle zeigen die beschriebenen Anwendungen dann einen breiten Randstreifen und nutzen somit die verfügbare Fläche kaum aus. Mit der zunehmenden Leistungsfähigkeit und verfügbaren Bandbreite von mobilen Geräten änderte sich auch das Nutzungsprofil vieler Menschen und damit auch die Anforderungen an die Applikationen, denn auf den meisten dieser Geräten lässt die Usability stark zu wünschen übrig. Durch das statische Design war in der Vergangenheit keine Anpassung an die Fähigkeiten der mobilen Geräte möglich, so das man dazu überging für solche Geräte angepasste Webseiten zu erstellen, die sich wieder an einer Standardauflösung für diese Geräteklasse orientierten. Dieser Ansatz führte allerdings dazu, das der Aufwand für Entwicklung und Design einer Anwendung gewachsen ist und bei der steigenden Heterogenität bald an seine Grenzen stößt. So kommt es, das Oberflächen viel Arbeit und Pflege benötigen, da die Inhalte für mehrere Versionen gepflegt werden müssen. Den Nutzer zwingen solche Oberflächen oft zur Kapitulation und erzeugen Frust. Das Framework, das Ziel dieser Arbeit sein wird, soll Designer von Oberflächen in der Weise unterstützen, das nur noch eine Oberfläche entworfen werden muss. Zusätzliche Annotationen sollen dann dafür sorgen, das eine Adaption der Oberfläche hilft, die Kluften zwischen den Geräten zu überbrücken. Der Nutzer wird in der Weise davon profitieren, das er auf jedem von ihm genutzten Gerät eine Oberfläche vorfindet, die einen hohen Grad an Usability vorweist. Auf Geräten mit wenig verfügbaren Platz, kann zum Beispiel die Oberfläche umorganisiert oder durch optische Effekte der zu bearbeitende Teil hervorgehoben werden. Durch die bessere Benutzbarkeit, wird auch der Anreiz erhöht, Applikationen unterwegs mit Handy oder PDA zu nutzen. Der Nutzer trägt so die Applikation immer bei sich und empfindet eine Erhöhung seiner Lebensqualität.

Development of a Framework for Simultaneous Multimodal Service Usage in a Home Environment

Maximilian Kern, Diploma Thesis, 2007

Abstract:
Today’s progression of web-based services offers the user a much greater degree of flexibility in interaction with computer systems. The permanent enhancement of devices comes along with a variety of ways for communication. Navigation with conventional devices such as keyboard, mouse and display is complemented through voice, touchscreen and haptical devices. In this diploma thesis a framework is developed, which supports simultaneous usage of modalities and offers functionalities for creation of interactive multimodal applications. The framework focusses on the interaction with voice but remains open for other modalities. Another aspect of this work is to define a XML language in order to annotate existing graphical user interfaces with information for voice input and output. At run-time a document created with this language is used to control the graphical representation of services via voice. The architecture of this framework follows a model-based approach. The designer has the ability to design the workflow of the application on a conceptual level and specify the appearance and content on a lower level. An example application was developed so as to evaluate the framework. This application assists to search for recipes and to prepare the preferred meal.

Development of a Framework for Seamless Mobile Applications

Marco Blumendorf, Diploma Thesis, 2005

Abstract:
The ongoing development of smaller and faster computers enables users to access information at any time, any place using numerous different devices. This ubiquitous access to information and services is about to strongly influence our every day life. One of the problems service developers face today is the diversity of the available devices. The market currently holds numerous mobile and tethered devices that are capable to access the Internet, request information and use services. Every single one of these devices has different capabilities and different user preferences to consider. Service developers and information providers now face the challenge to make their services available to this variety of users using a broad range of different devices. This thesis addresses the development of a framework for mobile application development that allows the provisioning of developed service to various devices, users and usage contexts. A system that allows the abstract description of information and the transformation of this content into various formats is designed and two approaches to implement such a system are presented, the Multi-Access Service Platform and the Mobile Object Factory. The Multi-Access Service Platform developed by the DAI-Labor of the Technical University of Berlin focuses on providing device independent user interface for seamless services for thin clients. It therefore provides a server-side framework that supports the application developer and the user interface developer during the creation of broadly accessible services. The Mobile Object Factory developed by Sun Microsystems in cooperation with the DAI-Labor of the Technical University of Berlin focuses on providing dynamic applications and service interfaces for Java capable mobile devices. It therefore provides a client-side framework that supports the rendering of abstract application descriptions and provides a device independent runtime environment. Both projects follow different approaches to the idea of simple provisioning of device independent user interfaces, but complement each other in various aspects and provide a well founded basis for further experimentations and implementations in this area.

An Architecture for ubiquitous Service Access in Distributed Systems

Sebastian Feuerstack, Diploma Thesis, 2003

Abstract:
Today, nearly all computers are connected together to form the worldwide Internet. Therefore much current research focuses on the integration of small computers even into everyday articles. Such Smart Objects are able to communicate, cooperate and exchange information with the Internet by utilizing wireless networks. This thesis focuses on the design of an architecture for ubiquitous access of the environment’s services and therefore concerns fundamentals like protocols for discovery and cooperation and in particular discusses the generation of user interfaces a human user needs in order to communicate with his intelligent environment. This has been achieved with a generic approach, which proposes a semantically based description for both device capabilities and the services features, that allows the generation of user interfaces for nearly every device the human user may utilize. The architecture enriches the interaction between the human user and his environment’s services with multimedia data which it dynamically adds, and even takes the individual user’s role and the device’s features into consideration when forming a presentation. This architecture for ubiquitous service access has been implemented on an agent platform and successfully addresses requirements specific to such a distributed system in the areas of scalability, modularity and fault tolerance.