Specification of User Interface Interactions and Screens for Mobile App Development

The size and complexity of mobile apps has been increasing in recent years resulting in a rising need for formal specification similar to traditional software projects with languages like UML. However, mobile apps are driven more strongly by user interface needs and user interface design plays a more prominent role in the software engineering process in comparison to traditional software projects. User Interface design on the other hand, often lacks techniques for formal specification. In this paper, UML statecharts are proposed for the preceding process of user interface specification as part of the app interaction design. In addition, a technique for specifying single screens of a mobile application is presented.