Computer-aided Design Of User Interfaces V

Today, the development life cycle of 3D User Interfaces (UIs) mostly remains an art more than a principled-based approach. Several methods [1,3,7,8,9,10,11,15,17,18,19] have been introduced to decompose this life cycle into steps and sub-steps, but these methods rarely provide the design knowledge that should be typically used for achieving each step. In addition, the development life cycle is more focusing directly on the programming - sues than on the design and analysis phases. This is sometimes reinforced by the fact that available tools for 3D UIs are toolkits, interface builders, r- dering engines, etc. When there is such a development life cycle defined, it is typically structured into the following set of activities: 1. The conceptual phase is characterized by the identification of the content and interaction requests. The meta-author discusses with the interface designer to take advantage of the current interaction technology. The int- face designer receives information about the content. The result of this phase is the production of UI schemes (e. g. , written sentences, visual schemes on paper) for defining classes of interactive experiences (e. g. , class Guided tour). Conceptual schemes are produced both for the final users and the authors. The meta-author has a deep knowledge of the c- tent domain and didactic skills too. He/she communicates with the final user too, in order to focus on didactic aspects of interaction. 2.

Roger Detels, Professor, Department of Epidemiology, University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health. Walter Holland, Professor, Royal College of Physicians, London. James McEwen, Professor, Department of Community Medicine, University of Glasgow.