Modeling and execution of software user interfaces

Summary form only given. Software front-end development is a costly and inefficient process, where manual coding is the predominant development approach, reuse of design artifacts is low, and cross-platform portability remains difficult, despite some trends towards HTML-based templating. In this sense, the availability of a platform-independent modeling language for describing the user interaction can bring several benefits to the development process of user interfaces. This speech focuses on the modeling of software UIs through graphical domain-specific languages and in particular shows the new standard adopted by OMG called IFML (Interaction Flow Modeling Language) at work. The speech illustrates the basic concepts of IFML, presents the design best practices and integration with other modelling languages, and discusses some large-scale industrial experiences (also featuring quantitative measures of productivity) achieved through IFML and associated full code generation techniques.