Toward a Design-Oriented User Interface Specification That Runs

For the purpose of developing and conveying designs, people designing user interfaces create descriptions in the form of text, drawings, diagrams, etc. We consider these forms of expression constituents of design-oriented user interface specifications. In a complimentary way, programmers building user interfaces create descriptions (e.g. code) that control user interface technology. We take interest in information systems and in styles of user interface descriptions that are design-oriented and able to control technology. This paper presents preliminary results from our research, specifically the capabilities of an experimental prototype that stages human-computer interaction by specification. We introduce a specification style that allows designers to directly craft user interface appearance and behavior at a detailed level without involving low-level programming concepts, and we discuss the rationale behind our notion of design orientation.