Next steps for work on model-based UI at W3C

Sorry for being late with this email, I've been busy travelling and 
other work.

The MBUI working group charter officially expires on 30 November, see:


    http://www.w3.org/2011/01/mbui-wg-charter

The chartered scope was:

Use cases and Requirements
     As needed to guide and justify the design decisions
     for the development of the specifications.
Specification of meta-models for interchange of models between authoring 
tools for (context aware) user interfaces for web-based interactive 
application front ends
     This could take the form of UML diagrams and OWL ontologies,
     and cover the various levels of abstraction (e.g. as defined
     in the Cameleon reference framework, as well as that needed
     to support dynamic adaption to changes in the context).
Specification of a markup language and API which realize the meta-models.
      This is expected to draw upon existing work such as (but
       ot restricted to) Concur Task Trees (CTT), Useware
      Markup Language (useML), UsiXML or UIML.
Test assertions and Test suite for demonstrating interoperability
      This is needed to support progress along the W3C
      Recommendation Track, and in particular, to exit from
      the Candidate Recommendation phase.
Model-based user interface design primer
      An explanation/guideline for how to apply the specifications
      to support the development of the associated use cases.
Open Source Implementations
       Working Group members may wish to develop open source
       implementations of authoring tools to demonstrate the
       potential, and for use in developing and applying the
       test suite described above.

We have successfully developed specifications for the abstract UI and 
task models, as well as an introduction and glossary. However, we 
haven't progressed very far along the standardization process, with our 
specifications still at the level of W3C Working Drafts.

To become W3C Recommendations (W3C's name for its standards), we need to 
have several independent implementations for model-based user interface 
design tools and to demonstrate successful interchange of UI models 
between them, as well as support for all normative aspects of the 
specifications.

The W3C Ubiquitous Application Design Community Group (UAD CG) has been 
set up to continue the discussion and to collect implementation and 
interoperability reports.

   http://www.w3.org/community/uad/

W3C Community Groups are open to all, and are free to join (no 
membership fees). The UAD CG is an opportunity to foster discussion 
between developers and researchers with a view to promoting the benefits 
of model-based UI design and soliciting real world developer feedback. 
This will stimulate new ideas for research, and provide a test of 
whether the meta-models developed in the MBUI WG are a good match to 
real-world developer needs.

The UAD CG could choose to have regular teleconferences, or it could 
stick with email and the wiki, and arrange occasional meetings as 
appropriate, perhaps co-located with other events, such as conferences. 
We are looking for volunteers to chair the UAD CG as I personally will 
have very little time available, and hence am unable to continue as the 
UAD CG chair.

Once, we have collected sufficient implementation feedback, we will then 
be in a position to re-charter the MBUI WG, however, W3C Management and 
the W3C Advisory Committee will be looking for stronger evidence of 
industry support before approving re-chartering.

I am sure that there are lots of questions, and look forward to 
discussing this further.

-- 
Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett

Received on Friday, 22 November 2013 10:51:49 UTC