Enriching UsiXML language to support awareness requirements

Awareness support in model-driven architecture approaches is almost nonexistent. Although it is a required feature for the development of collaborative applications, the consideration of awareness in development methodologies and tools has been hindered by the lack of model-driven oriented conceptual models. This work presents an extension to the user interface description language UsiXML for describing generic awareness support in software development, with special focus on requirements level, and keeping a traceable path throughout the development stages. UsiXML describes multimodal and multicontextual user interfaces by following a model-driven approach to software development, and one of its purposes is to enable the development of highly interactive user interfaces, where awareness plays an important role. Furthermore, a template to gather awareness information requirements is provided to help designers explore and describe them in the early design stages.