The MaggLite Post-WIMP Toolkit: Draw It, Connect It and Run It

Stéphane Huot (1) , Cédric Dumas (1, 2) , Pierre Dragicevic (3) , Gérard Hégron (4) , Jean-Daniel Fekete (5)

1 Mines Nantes - Mines Nantes
2 IRCCyN - Institut de Recherche en Communications et en Cybernétique de Nantes
3 IRIT-LIIHS - Logiciels Interactifs et Interaction Homme-Système
4 CERMA - Centre de recherche méthodologique d'architecture
5 IN-SITU - Situated interaction

This article presents MaggLite, a toolkit and sketch-based interface builder allowing fast and interactive design of post-WIMP user interfaces. MaggLite improves design of advanced UIs thanks to its novel mixed-graph architecture that dynamically combines scene-graphs with interaction- graphs. Scene-graphs provide mechanisms to describe and produce rich graphical effects, whereas interaction-graphs allow expressive and fine-grained description of advanced interaction techniques and behaviors such as multiple pointers management, toolglasses, bimanual interaction, gesture, and speech recognition. Both graphs can be built interactively by sketching the UI and specifying the interaction using a dataflow visual language. Communication between the two graphs is managed at runtime by components we call Interaction Access Points. While developers can extend the toolkit by refining built-in generic mechanisms, UI designers can quickly and interactively design, prototype and test advanced user interfaces by applying the MaggLite principle: "draw it, connect it and run it".

Domaines: Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]

Stéphane Huot, Cédric Dumas, Pierre Dragicevic, Gérard Hégron, Jean-Daniel Fekete. The MaggLite Post-WIMP Toolkit: Draw It, Connect It and Run It. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2004), 2004, Santa Fe, NM, United States. pp.257-266, ⟨10.1145/1029632.1029677⟩. ⟨inria-00550595⟩