1 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008 Towards a Library of Workflow User Interface Patterns Josefina Guerrero García 1, Jean Vanderdonckt 1, Juan Manuel González Calleros 1, Marco Winckler 1,2 1 Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) Louvain School of Management (LSM) - Information Systems Unit (ISYS) Belgian Laboratory of Computer-Human Interaction (BCHI) 2 IRIT, Université Toulouse 3, France, 118 route de Narbonne, F Toulouse cedex 9 (France), –

2 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008 Outline Introduction & motivations Developing user interfaces for workflow information systems Workflow user interface patterns Conclusion and related work

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

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

5 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008 Developing user interfaces for workflow information systems

6 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008 Developing user interfaces for workflow information systems Task & domain level AUI level CUI level FUI level

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

8 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008 Workflow user interface patterns Augmented UI pattern definition Identifier Name Alias Synopsis Strengths Weakness Opportunities Threads Problem Solution Example Incorporation in the model- driven engineering method Final WUIPs Definition WUIP

9 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008 Examples Direct allocation: “Ask reviewers preferences” task must only be undertaken by “Joshua Brown”

10 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008 Example 2 Hierarchy level-based : “Reduce wage bill” task is allocated to a “Financier” with has a 5 level, i.e. the “Financial Manager”

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

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

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

14 DSV-IS’2008, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, July 16-18, 2008 Thank you very much for your attention For more information and downloading, User Interface eXtensible Markup Language European network on Multimodal UIs Special thanks to all members of the team!