Model-driven development of user interfaces for IoT systems via domain-specific components and patterns

• Published in: Journal of internet services and applications Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 1 - 21
• Main Authors: Brambilla, Marco, Umuhoza, Eric, Acerbis, Roberto
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer London 01.12.2017; Sociedade Brasileira de Computação; Brazilian Computing Society (SBC)
• Subjects: Computer Applications; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Design pattern; Information Systems and Communication Service; Internet of Things; IT in Business; Mobile applications; Model-driven development; Modeling; Processor Architectures; Thematic Series on Verification and Composition for the Internet of Services and Things; User interaction; User interface; User interfaces; Internet of things; User interaction; Design pattern; User experience; Mobile applications; Modeling; IFML; Model-driven development; Software engineering
• ISSN: 1867-4828; 1869-0238
• DOI: 10.1186/s13174-017-0064-1

Internet of Things technologies and applications are evolving and continuously gaining traction in all fields and environments, including homes, cities, services, industry and commercial enterprises. However, still many problems need to be addressed. For instance, the IoT vision is mainly focused on the technological and infrastructure aspect, and on the management and analysis of the huge amount of generated data, while so far the development of front-end and user interfaces for IoT has not played a relevant role in research. On the contrary, user interfaces can play a key role in the acceptance of IoT solutions by final adopters. In this paper we discuss the requirements and usage scenarios covering the front end aspects of IoT systems and we present a model-driven approach to the design of such interfaces by: defining specific components and design patterns using a visual modeling language for IoT applications; describing an implementation of the solution that comprises also automatic code generation from models; and by showing the solution at work.