1.
Extending the Interaction Flow Modeling
Language (IFML) for Model Driven
Development of Mobile Applications Front End
Marco Brambilla1, Andrea Mauri1, Eric Umuhoza1,2
1 Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria. Politecnico di Milano
2 AtlanMod team, Ecole des Mines de Nantes
Speaker:
eric.umuhoza@polimi.it
EricUmuhoza
MobiWIS Conference, Barcelona, August 27-29 ,2014

2.
Outline
 Model driven development(MDD) approach &
mobile apps development
 The Interaction Flow Modeling Language(IFML)
 Mobile Extension to IFML(mobile IFML)
 Concrete syntax by example
 Mobile IFML & Code Generation
 Conclusions

3.
MDD in mobile apps front end
 Manual coding is the predominant development approach
– Reuse of design artifacts is low
– High risks of errors
– High costs for cross-platform development
 Platform-independent user interaction modeling language
can bring several benefits
– Model once and generate for any platform of choice
– It improves the development process
– It enables the communication of interface and
interaction design to non-technical stakeholders
– It allows the early validation of requirements

4.
The Interaction Flow Modeling
Language
 An OMG standard designed for expressing:
– Content visualized in the user interfaces
– User events and interaction, and
– Control behavior of the front-end of SW
applications

5.
IFML main concepts
 Container
 ViewComponent
 Event
 Action

6.
IFML main concepts - 2
 Navigation flow
 Data flow
 Parameter binding

7.
IFML concrete syntax -example
View Container Parameter Binding
Event
View Component
Action
Navigation Flow

8.
IFML metamodel - Extensions
 Organized in two main packages: – IFML Core
– IFML Extensions
and then you can extend it as
you want, for different fields
and platforms (Web, Mobile, …)

9.
Why IFML?
 It is an OMG Standard for Interaction Flow
Modeling
 The composition of mobile apps interface
can be expressed with the core IFML
concepts of ViewContainers and
ViewComponents
 It is extensible
 Our IFML based modeling experience

10.
Mobile IFML
 Two main motivation:
–Complexity of interaction patterns to
better exploit the limited space
– Interaction with other hardware and
software components(sensors, apps,…)

11.
Mobile IFML - 2
 Four main extension definitions :
– ViewContainers and ViewComponents
– MobileContext, capturing all dimensions
that characterize the user’s intent,
device’s capacity and the
environment surrounding the user
– MobileEvents, addressing the capturing
of the mobile events
– MobileAction and MobileActionEvent

12.
Mobile IFML – Container & Components
 Some concepts
may be extended
to better reflect
the terminology
and properties of
mobile apps.
 Plus <<MobileSystem>> stereotype

13.
Mobile IFML – MobileContext
 It assumes particular relevance in mobile apps
 The context must gather all the dimensions that characterize:
– The user's intent
– The capacity of access device
– The communication network, and etc.

14.
Mobile IFML – MobileEvents
 Three categories of mobile events:
– Events generated by the interaction of
the user such as LongPress, swipe, etc.
– Events triggered by the mobile device
features such as sensors, battery, etc.
– Events triggered by user actions related to
the device components such as taking a
photo, recording a video or using the
microphone

15.
Mobile IFML – MobileViewElementEvent
 Events
generated by
the interaction
of the user

16.
Mobile IFML – MobileSystemEvent
 Events produced
by the mobile
system

17.
Mobile IFML – MobileActionEvent
Screen MobileViewElementEvent
MobileComponent
MobileAction MobileActionEvent

18.
Modeling tool - demo
Open source project
http://ifml.github.io
Eclipse plugin available at
https://ifml.github.io/update/site.xml

19.
Code Generation

20.
Conclusions
 A mobile extension of OMG’s standard IFML
 A Sirius based IFML modeling tool
 Prototype of the code generators
 Future works
– Improvement of the modeling tool
– Implementation of more refined code
generators
– Study of the design patterns for MD mobile
apps design
 Acknowledgement: this work was partially funded by the AutoMobile EU
7th FP SME Research project(http://automobile.webratio.com)