On the Automated Generation of UI for Template-based Requirements Specification

Requirements specification is a critical phase of the software development life cycle where requirements are identified and documented. To mitigate the ambiguity of natural language, templates can be adopted for the semi-formal specification of requirements. Automated specification support is important as it simplifies and expedites the specification process. However, developing the User Interface (UI) for template-based specification is demanding in terms of time and resources. In this paper, we propose a model-driven approach for generating UIs that support template-based requirements specification. We support the generation through mapping rules that link the template metamodel to the UI metamodel. We provide a systematic four-step process for the generation of UI from an input template, which includes preparation, components identification, rendering, and integration. We implemented our approach into our tool MD-RSuT for the automated generation of UI. To evaluate our approach, we compared it to manual UI development and assessed the quality of generated UIs. Our evaluation indicated that the approach provides multiple advantages over manual development, and the generated UIs adhere to UI design principles of structure, simplicity, visibility, feedback, tolerance, and reuse.