Towards end-user development of distributed user interfaces

Over the last decade, we have seen an increasing number of solutions for distributed user interfaces (DUIs). This paper provides a detailed overview of existing DUI approaches and classify the different solutions based on the granularity of the distributed UI components, the supported interaction space as well as their support for the distribution of state. After the analysis of existing solutions, we discuss a DUI scenario and derive a number of requirements for end-user DUI development. We propose an approach where users can author their customised user interfaces based on a hypermedia metamodel and the concept of active components. We further discuss possibilities for the configuration and sharing of customised distributed user interfaces by end users where the focus is on an authoring rather than a programming approach.