A user-centered methodology to generate visual modeling environments

CASE tools supporting many activities of the software development process embed visual modeling environments. Indeed, visual languages are practical means to allow engineers to define models and different views of software systems. However the effectiveness of visual modeling environments strongly depends from the process and tools used for their development. In this paper we present a user-centered methodology for the development of customized visual environments, and a tool to support it. The use of UML meta-modeling techniques and formal methods characterizes the proposed approach. Moreover. incremental development and rapid prototyping are ensured by the use of an automatic generation tool that allows designers to focus on structural features of the target language disregarding the visual environment creation.