If you are interested in understanding how the systematic use of task models in the design, development, and usability evaluation of interactive software applications can open new opportunities and possibilities then this book will help you do just that. Fabio Paternò also discusses related issues relevant to designing user interfaces and provides a state-of-the-art review of the field, including recently developed methods, current results and problems and trends. Details of the notation and analysis discussed, including case studies of industrial interest, are available for those who want to use them for applied projects and in industrial contexts. While the book is designed to suit a range of academic and industrial courses on task models and methods for user interface design and evaluation, it will also be useful as supplementary reading for any course on human-computer interaction and software engineering.

The only up-to-date assessment of the state of the art in this field The only book to look specifically at the advantages of a systematic use of task models in the design/development of user interfaces

Inhalt
1 Introduction.- 1.1 Why model-based design and evaluation of interactive applications ?.- 1.2 Basic concepts.- 1.3 Structure of the book and intended audience.- 1.4 Other sources of information.- 2 Model-Based Approaches.- 2.1 Task-oriented approaches.- 2.2 GOMS.- 2.3 Norman's cycle.- 2.4 Task analysis methods.- 2.5 UAN.- 2.6 Petri Nets.- 2.7 UML.- 2.8 Formal Methods for HCI.- 2.9 Exercises.- 3 Analysis of Interactive Applications.- 3.1 Scenarios.- 3.2 Use Cases.- 3.3 Task analysis.- 3.4 Support for task identification in informal scenarios.- 3.5 Task and errors.- 3.6 Exercises.- 4 The Concurtasktrees Notation.- 4.1 Introduction to ConcurTaskTrees.- 4.2 Task allocation.- 4.3 Temporal relationships.- 4.4 Task types.- 4.5 Additional information associated with tasks.- 4.6 Structuring the task model.- 4.7 Example of ConcurTaskTrees specification.- 4.8 Tool support.- 4.9 Task models for cooperative applications.- 4.10 Exercises.- 5 Task-Based Design.- 5.1 Approaches to task-based design.- 5.2 Aspects to consider when designing user interfaces.- 5.3 Criteria for grouping tasks to be supported by the same presentation.- 5.4 Task-driven design of user interfaces.- 5.5 An example.- 5.6 Tasks for accessing databases.- 5.7 Task-oriented help.- 5.8 Adaptability.- 5.9 Adaptivity.- 5.10 Concluding remarks.- 5.11 Exercises.- 6 Architectural Models of Interactive Applications.- 6.1 Architectures for user interfaces.- 6.2 The interactor model.- 6.3 Composition operators for interactors.- 6.4 From the task model to the user interface architecture model.- 6.5 The transformation algorithm.- 6.6 Connecting interactors to support the information flow.- 6.7 An example of application of the transformation.- 6.8 Exercises.- 7 Patterns in Interactive Applications.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2Patterns.- 7.3 How to represent a task pattern.- 7.4 An example of a task pattern.- 7.5 Architectural patterns.- 7.6 An example of an architectural pattern.- 7.7 Relationships between tasks and architectural patterns.- 7.8 Tool support for patterns.- 7.9 Comments on patterns.- 7.10 Exercises.- 8 Usability Evaluation.- 8.1 Criteria for user interface evaluation.- 8.2 Introduction to approaches to usability evaluation.- 8.3 Comparing methods for usability evaluation.- 8.4 Remote usability evaluation.- 8.5 The RemUSINE method.- 8.6 Evaluation of RemUSINE.- 8.7 Exercises.- 9 Conclusions.- 9.1 Summarising the results described.- 9.2 Suggestions for open areas of interests.- References.