UI Fin

摘要

Even though over the years a multitude of user interface design tools have been created, designers in practice find themselves limited to a small set of realistic options. These options include interface builders that are attached to development environments, or general-purpose tools such as Microsoft Visio. We claim that the inability of many user interface tools to find their way into a designer's toolbox is due in great part to their failure to support the process of designing a user interface. In this paper, we introduce UI Fin, a user interface design tool that: (a) fits within and supports a common process for user interface design, (b) enables user-centered, as opposed to widget-centered, screen design, (c) provides decision-support for designers, and (d) bridges the transitions between the multiple actors in the design and engineering of a user interface. UI Fin has been used in real-world interface design projects and it appears to improve the efficiency of the design process, to enable multiple types of users to create design artifacts, and to present a relatively low barrier for novice users to become productive with the tool.