A model-driven approach for generating interfaces from user interaction diagrams

The complexity of software and the interface design are two of the main development challenges, as they deman much understanding of the requirements. To address this issue, this article proposes the combination of User Interaction Diagrams (UID) along with the automatic models transformations approach (MDD). Together, these techniques allow the capturing, modeling the user interaction with the system at a high level of abstraction and automatic code generation. A tool was developed to transform UIDs in platform independent models, which in turn are transformed into user interfaces implemented in different technologies. A case study where UIs with JSF and ASP. Net are generated from requirements represented by UIDs is presented and compared with real-world applications to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposal.