A Model-Based Approach to Presentation: A Continuum from Task Analysis to Prototype

This paper presents a complete model-based approach to the building of presentation for a business oriented highly interactive application. This approach is considered complete in the sense that it supports a continuum from task analysis to a first prototype without disruption. The main steps involved in the proposed methodology include a task analysis performed as a hierarchical decomposition of the interactive task into sub-tasks, a specification of the functional requirements and its integration with task analysis results, a writing of an activity chaining graph which graphically depicts the information and function flow within the task, the selection of an interaction style, the definition of presentation units, the selection of abstract interaction objects, their transformation into concrete objects to be placed before generating a first prototype. The described methodology not only consists of the definition of these steps, but also shows how computer-aided tools can automatically generate the presentation of such an interface.