A case study on variability in user interfaces

Author
Year of Publication
2012
Conference
16th International Software Product Line Conference, SPLC 12, Salvador, Brazil - September 2-7, 2012, Volume 1
Pages
6-10
URL
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2362536.2362542
DOI
10.1145/2362536.2362542
Keywords
Abstract
Software Product Lines (SPL) enable efficient derivation of products. SPL concepts have been applied successfully in many domains including interactive applications. However, the user interface (UI) part of applications has barely been addressed yet. While standard SPL concepts allow derivation of functionally correct UIs, there are additional non-functional requirements, like usability, which have to be considered. This paper presents a case study investigating UI variability found in variants of the commercial web-based information system HIS-GX/QIS. We analyze which aspects of a UI vary and to which degree. The results show that just tweaking the final UI (e.g., using stylesheets) is not sufficient but there is a need for more customization which must be supported by, e.g., UI-specific models.