INTERFACES GRÁFICAS COM O USUÁRIO: UMA ABORDAGEM BASEADA EM PADRÕES

Abstract

User interface development is a complex activity that demands considerable effort during the development of an information system. The search for new methods to support the development of such interfaces is an extremely important task for both the reduction of project costs and the improvement of its interfaces. This work assumes that graphical user interfaces can be developed effectively through the use of patterns. On such a patter-based approach, a graphical interface pattern collection would be used together with a class library that implements it. The collection document would be used during the system analysis phase, while the class library would be used in its implementation. To demonstrate the usability of this approach, a pattern collection was composed and later implemented as a class library on an object-oriented programming language. The results of this work suggest that the separation between the description and the implementation of a patternbasedinterface model is clearly possible. Further, this pattern class library was used in the development of the graphical interfaces of a real, mid-sized information system. The results indicate that the pattern-based approach is adequate for the development of the graphical interfaces of information systems.