Model-Driven Development of Mobile Applications Allowing Role-Driven Variants

This research aims to simplify the creation of applications for mobile platforms by developing a high-level and platform independent model of an application, and automatically transforming this high-level model to platform specific code. The research method is a combination of the model-driven development (MDD) approach in software development and application of techniques in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) particularly on user centered system design. This research involves developing a graphical modeling language which is specific to mobile applications, and coming up with a generic algorithm for the conversion of this graphical model into code. The main focus of the research however, will be on the design of the graphical model, and the interaction techniques which will allow non-expert people 1 to create specialized mobile applications with ease. Key research questions that need to be answered are: Which level of abstraction and modeling constructs are adequate for non-expert people to create specialized mobile applications? How can technical details such as device limitations, transmission of information to other devices or to the network, etc., be abstracted from the non-expert user as they model the application so that they can focus more on the design and logic of their application, but at the same time take advantage of advance capabilities of mobile devices (GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.)? How can the design of interaction with other devices that connects to mobile applications become simpler? Do non-experts want the modeler interface to look like the actual application or do some high level form just like in UML would be enough?