Interface Architecture

Interface Architecture

1. Precise Understanding of UI

   • Analyze limitations of interfaces
   • Predict edge cases in their behaviour
   • Discuss their behavious precisely
   • Knowledge of UI implementation
     • Helps in Inventing new paradigms
     • Helps in identifying limitations in old UI
     • Helps in envisioning new interfaces which don't have the previous flaws
     • Helps Designers communicate about interface implementations and alternatives with engineers

2. States and Events

   • States
     • Indicate the input to change the state
   • Events
     • What the users do that that particular time
     • Events causes the states to change

3. Model View Controller (MVC)

   • Model
     • Model is responsible for storing and retrieving data
   • View
     • View is responsible for presenting data and listening for user input
   • Controller
     • Controller is responsible for managing the interaction between the data storage and presentation using the state machine

4. View Hierarchies

   • It is essential to connect multiple widgets (or MVCs) in an entire interface
   • Layouts
     • Containers in which Widgets (or MVCs) are stored
   • Event Propagation
     • Process in which the UI events move from physical device to a particular UI component in a larger view hierarchy

5. Advances in Architecture

   • Amulet Toolkit
     • Used in 1990s for supporting graphical objects, animations and commands
   • Scene graphs
     • Made easier to build heavily animated and connected interfaces.
   • Modify UI without modifying their underlying code to generate many possible interfaces
   • Test and Debuging
     • Expose information about events, event handling, and finite state machine state.
     • Recording and replaying interaction data with interfaces to help localize defects in UI behavior
     • Testing security vulnerabilities in user interfaces
   • DART Toolkit
     • Invented for several abstractions for augmented reality applications