Towards better usability and design in APIs for distributed user interfaces : through an exploratory literature review, development of a DUI, and study with software developers

Abstract: In this paper, design decisions to improve usability in APIs for implementations of DUI applications has been investigated. Namely what abstractions an API like that should provide to the programmer, and how those abstractions should be presented syntax-wise to the programmer in the API. The exploration was done with a literature study, development of a game prototype with a DUI API, and three user sessions where an interview, and a sketch task was done with the participating developers.