Previously, we defined a blackbox formal system modeling language called RSML (Requirements State Machine Language). The language was developed over several years while specifying the system requirements for a collision avoidance system for commercial passenger aircraft. During the language development, we received continual feedback and evaluation by FAA employees and industry representatives, which helped us to produce a specification language that is easily learned and used by application experts. Since the completion of the RSML project, we have continued our research on specification languages. This research is part of a larger effort to investigate the more general problem of providing tools to assist in developing embedded systems. Our latest experimental toolset is called SpecTRM (Specification Tools and Requirements Methodology), and the formal specification language is SpecTRM-RL (SpecTRM Requirements Language). This paper describes what we have learned from ...

Source-code examples of APIs enable developers to quickly gain a gestalt understanding of a library’s functionality, and they support organically creating applications by incrementally modifying a functional starting point. As an increasing number of web sites provide APIs, significant latent value lies in connecting the complementary representations between site and service — in essence, enabling sites themselves to be the example corpus. We introduce d.mix, a tool for creating web mashups that leverages this site-to-service correspondence. With d.mix, users browse annotated web sites and select elements to sample. d.mix’s sampling mechanism generates the underlying service calls that yield those elements. This code can be edited, executed, and shared in d.mix’s wiki-based hosting environment. This sampling approach leverages pre-existing web sites as example sets and supports fluid composition and modification of examples. An initial study with eight participants found d.mix to enable rapid experimentation, and suggested avenues for improving its annotation mechanism. ACM Classification: D.2.2 [Software Engineering]: Design

Sensors are becoming increasingly important in interaction design. Authoring a sensor-based interaction comprises three steps: choosing and connecting the appropriate hardware, creating application logic, and specifying the relationship between sensor values and application logic. Recent research has successfully addressed the first two issues. However, linking sensor input data to application logic remains an exercise in patience and trial-and-error testing for most designers. This paper introduces techniques for authoring sensor-based interactions by demonstration. A combination of direct manipulation and pattern recognition techniques enables designers to control how demonstrated examples are generalized to interaction rules. This approach emphasizes design exploration by enabling very rapid iterative demonstrate-edit-review cycles. This paper describes the manifestation of these techniques in a design tool, Exemplar, and presents evaluations through a first-use lab study and a theoretical analysis using the Cognitive

The ready availability of online source-code examples has fundamentally changed programming practices. However, current search tools are not designed to assist with programming tasks and are wholly separate from editing tools. This paper proposes that embedding a task-specific search engine in the development environment can significantly reduce the cost of finding information and thus enable programmers to write better code more easily. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of Blueprint, a Web search interface integrated into the Adobe Flex Builder development environment that helps users locate example code. Blueprint automatically augments queries with code context, presents a code-centric view of search results, embeds the search experience into the editor, and retains a link between copied code and its source. A comparative laboratory study found that Blueprint enables participants to write significantly better code and find example code significantly faster than with a standard Web browser. Analysis of three months of usage logs with 2,024 users suggests that task-specific search interfaces can significantly change how and when people search the Web.

In this paper, we present a contribution to the way in which two design issues encountered by the AVANTI project in designing a Web service supporting the mobility of disabled people can be faced. The design issues are: the problems deriving from distribution of the teams collaborating to the project in several cities (sometimes different European countries); and the need to face high-level interaction problems in the evaluation process. One important action taken to face these issues was the development of a variation of the Cognitive Walkthrough based on the Norman's model of action.

Traditionally critiquing messages in Domain Oriented Design Environments are presented as text in a window to which all critics send their message. In this paper alternative methods for presenting critiquing messages in a direct manipulation style will be discussed. Critics which change the shape of the cursor, indicate relations of objects, change the visible properties of the objects, modify the contents of the evaluation window and the agenda, and let users manipulate their designs from alternative perspectives will be presented in the context of the PetriNED design environment. It will be argued that the challenge for critics using direct manipulation style critique delivery is not-as for critics following the traditional way of presenting messages- to "say the right thing at the right time" but to "show the right thing at the right place", and that the latter challenge is not as big as the former and allows for a much better support of design tasks.

As an increasing number of web sites provide APIs, significant latent value for supporting developers ’ use of these APIs lies in the site-service correspondence: the site and its API offer complementary representations of equivalent functionality. We introduce d.mix, a tool that realizes this latent value, lowering the threshold for creating web mash-ups. With d.mix, users browse annotated web sites and perform a parametric copy of elements of interest. While a traditional copy contains web page elements, a parametric copy performs proxy-based rewriting of pages to select the underlying programmatic calls that yield those elements. Developers can paste this code and edit, execute, and share scripts on d.mix’s wiki-based authoring environment. This approach speeds the creation of web applications while preserving the flexibility and high ceiling of script-based programming. An initial study with eight participants found d.mix to enable rapid experimentation, and suggested avenues for improving its annotation mechanism. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces — Graphical user interfaces.

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. Previously, we defined a blackbox formal system modeling language called RSML (Requirements State Machine Language). The language was developed over several years while specifying the system requirements for a collision avoidance system for commercial passenger aircraft. During the language development, we received continual feedback and evaluation by FAA employees and industry representatives, which helped us to produce a specification language that is easily learned and used by application experts. Since the completion of the RSML project, we have continued our research on specification languages. This research is part of a larger effort to investigate the more general problem of providing tools to assist in developing embedded systems. Our latest experimental toolset is called SpecTRM (Specification Tools and Requirements Methodology), and the formal specification language is SpecTRM-RL (SpecTRM Requirements Language). This paper describes what we have learned from ...