User interface design for multiple device applications

Abstract

Applications that run on multiple devices such as personal computers, mobile phones and palm computers are increasingly becoming common. This paper presents an interactor framework for designing user interfaces for multi-device applications. Unlike research reported in the literature. our framework is mainly for concrete interface transformation instead of abstract interface specification. Specifically, the framework allows interface designers to design an application interface for a concrete device, preferably a small device, and then transform the interface into other devices. The advantage of this approach is that an application interface designed for an original device reflects the designer's true design intentions so that it is likely to be more usable and consistent when transformed into other devices. The paper also discusses issues such as mapping, layout and event handling that occur in the transformation process and proposes techniques for handling them. The feasibility and effectiveness of the framework is demonstrated by developing a practical application.