Generating educational mobile applications using UIDPs identified by artificial intelligence techniques

• Published in: Computer standards and interfaces Vol. 70; pp. 103407 - 22
• Main Authors: Sánchez-Morales, Laura Nely, Alor-Hernández, Giner, Rosales-Morales, Viviana Yarel, Cortes-Camarillo, Cesar Augusto, Sánchez-Cervantes, José Luis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.06.2020; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Applications programs; Artificial intelligence; Automatic code generation; Education; Educational apps; Electronic devices; Encyclopedias; Image processing; Mobile computing; Mobile development; Software; Software development; Software engineering; User interface design pattern; Educational apps; Mobile development; Image processing; Automatic code generation; User interface design pattern
• ISSN: 0920-5489; 1872-7018
• DOI: 10.1016/j.csi.2019.103407

•A new process for developing educational mobile applications is proposed.•Our process generates mobile applications on different software platforms.•User Interface Design Patterns and Artificial Intelligence techniques were used.•A Web-based tool called EduMatic was developed as a proof-of-concept. Commercial mobile devices vary in brand, size, and functionalities, but they all allow people to interact with educational applications. In software engineering, application development techniques, approaches, methodologies, and processes (e.g., BBD, FDD, RAD, DDD) are often time consuming, costly, or aim at expert developers – which implies that users outside the software development field (e.g., teachers) need great practice to become experienced application developers. This work proposes an artificial-intelligence-based process for generating educational mobile apps from freehand-generated images. The images’ design is based on User Interface Design Pattern (UIDP) representations. As a proof of concept, we introduce EduMatic, an application development tool. To test our process, we assessed Wiki-Comp, an application built with EduMatic, along with three other external educational applications: Khan Academy, Wiki encyclopedia, and Kiwix. According to the evaluation results, Wiki-Comp outstands in functionality, usability, and performance aspects.