1 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008

Towards a Library ofWorkflow User Interface Patterns

Josefina Guerrero García1, Jean Vanderdonckt1,Juan Manuel González Calleros1, Marco Winckler1,2

1Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)Louvain School of Management (LSM) - Information Systems Unit (ISYS)

Belgian Laboratory of Computer-Human Interaction (BCHI)http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/bchi

2IRIT, Université Toulouse 3, France, 118 route de Narbonne,F-31062 Toulouse cedex 9 (France), winckler@irit.fr – http://liihs.irit.fr/winckler/

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Outline

• Introduction & motivations

• Developing user interfaces for workflow information systems

• Workflow user interface patterns

• Conclusion and related work

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Introduction & motivations

• Workflow is defined as the automation of business process.

• A Workflow Information System (WfIS) is a system that defines, creates and manages the execution of workflows through the use of software; the users of a WfIS interact with it through its user interfaces (UIs).

• Workflow patterns refer specifically to recurrent problems and proven solutions related to the development of WfIS in particular, and more broadly, of process-oriented applications.

• Workflow resource patterns have been identified that capture the different manners in which resources are presented and used in workflows.

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Introduction & motivations

• The rationale for identifying these patterns was the need to master the many ways according which work can be distributed.

• We explore a systematic manner to develop user interfaces (UIs) for each workflow resource pattern following the same definition and using UsiXML language.

• The goal of this work is not to reproduce the workflow resource patterns, but to associate a default UI to each pattern.

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Developing user interfaces for workflow information

systems

Task Task Resource User Stereotype

Material

Immaterial

ProcessWorkflow

1..*

0..1

1..*

1..*

1..*

ContextDomain Platform

Environment

Abstract UI

Concrete UI

Final UI

0..*

0..*

0..*

1..*

0..n

Task & domain

AUI level

CUI level

FUI level

Task Task Resource User Stereotype

Material

Immaterial

ProcessWorkflow

1..*

0..1

1..*

1..*

1..*

ContextDomain Platform

Environment

Abstract UI

Concrete UI

Final UI

0..*

0..*

0..*

1..*

0..n

Task & domain

AUI level

CUI level

FUI level

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Developing user interfaces for workflow information

systems

Task & domain level

AUI level

CUI level

FUI level

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Workflow user interface patterns

• We adopted the following methodology for defining Workflow User Interface Pattern (WUIP):

– Augmented UI pattern definition– Incorporation in the model-driven engineering method– Final WUIPs

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Workflow user interface patterns

Augmented UI pattern definition

Identifier Name Alias Synopsis Strengths Weakness Opportunities ThreadsProblem Solution Example

Incorporation in the model-driven engineering method

Final WUIPs

Definition WUIP

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Examples

• Direct allocation: “Ask reviewers preferences” task must only be undertaken by “Joshua Brown”

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Example 2

• Hierarchy level-based : “Reduce wage bill” task is allocated to a “Financier” with has a 5 level, i.e. the “Financial Manager”

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Conclusion and related work

• Workflow resource patterns correspond to the manner in which tasks are allocated to resources.

• This paper introduced a library of user interface design patterns that are particularly applicable to user interfaces of workflow information systems.

• For each workflow pattern from Russel & van der Aalst, we have a task model, a AUI model, a CUI model

• Designers are able now to specificity resource allocation patterns using UIs that fits: both at design-time and at run-time, considering constraints imposed by mutually excluded patterns.

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Conclusion and related work

• YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) provides support for the resource perspective.

• We rely on a proved method to generate User Interfaces, UsiXML, passing from task model and abstract user interface to final user interface.

• We propose a model-driven engineering method that provides designers with methodological guidance on how to systematically derive user interfaces of workflow information systems from a series of models.

• It is intended that our model supports changes inside the organization and automatically update the UIs generated.

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Thank you very much for your attention

For more information and downloading,http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/bchi

http://www.usixml.orgUser Interface eXtensible Markup Language

http://www.similar.ccEuropean network on Multimodal UIs

Special thanks to all members of the team!