GUI Change Method according to Roles of Widgets and Change Patterns

To develop usable software, it is necessary to develop Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) in iterative steps, such as evaluating the usability of GUIs and improving GUIs. In improving GUIs, developers are often required to modify both the GUI and the logic code of the software. In our research, to facilitate GUI improvement, we propose a method of automatically searching for code to be modified and suggesting how to modify them. To search for appropriate code to be modified, we define the roles of widgets according to their purpose and the patterns for how to change GUIs. In our method, how to change GUIs is specified, and then the parts of source programs that are required to be modified are searched for. Also, we classify methods for each widget according to their functions. Using this classification, a method of modifying the code that is searched for is suggested.