Integrating User Interface Development and Modern Software Development

A long-term goal for software engineers is integrating the separate processes of user interface development and modern software development. With emergent CASE technology, software engineers can begin to explore ways to achieve this integration. Exploration involves investigating candidate methodologies that let developers apply different development strategies to different parts of an interactive system. Disciplined long-term investigation requires that the fundamental principles governing each process be fixed and that evolving development methods comprising each process be accommodated. This paper proposes a computer-based process model that fixes the principles and accommodates evolving methods. Model features include a collection of software engineering and knowledge engineering techniques that supports a development organization of human and computer-based agents, a coordination activity that supports opportunistic behavior of developers, a unifying representation that leads to mutually consistent results from developers, and an extendable topology that enhances collaboration among developers while reducing their communications burden.