Open AccessSearch‐based software engineering for optimising usability of user interfaces within model transformations
Author(s) -
Hentati Marwa,
Trabelsi Abdelwaheb,
Benammar Lassaad,
Mahfoudhi Adel
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
iet software
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.305
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1751-8814
pISSN - 1751-8806
DOI - 10.1049/iet-sen.2018.5161
Subject(s) - usability , computer science , model transformation , search based software engineering , set (abstract data type) , software engineering , component based usability testing , transformation (genetics) , usable , heuristic evaluation , software , data mining , software development , human–computer interaction , usability inspection , component based software engineering , programming language , artificial intelligence , world wide web , consistency (knowledge bases) , gene , biochemistry , chemistry
Search‐based Software Engineering stands for an important area of research which involves finding optimal solutions for software engineering problems according to a set of conflicting objectives. One of these problems is improving the software quality such as usability of user interfaces following the model‐driven engineering (MDE) paradigm. Transforming models consist of a set of transformation rules that describe how a component from a source model can be transformed into one or several target models. Although alternative target models may be equivalent from the functional viewpoint, they may differ from the non‐functional perspectives. Besides, they do not fulfil the same usability aspects. In this context, search‐based algorithms aim to identify which alternative transformation will produce a highly‐usable target model. This study addresses this issue by combining the power of model transformations engine and search‐based techniques . Specifically, the proposed approach defines model transformation as a usability optimisation problem. It allows the search of the optimal alternative transformation from a large search space taking into account a set of required usability attributes and using an evolutionary algorithm.