Composing interactive systems by planning

User Interfaces (UIs) are mostly produced along a mental forward engineering process consisting in step by step transforming abstract descriptions into more concrete ones. Transformations make trade-offs between the context of use (<user, platform, environment>) and the usability properties that have been elicited as key. In ubiquitous computing, neither the context of use nor the user’s objectives can be set at design time: they may opportunistically emerge with the arrival/departure of interaction resources and/or user’s needs. As a result, there is a need for dynamically composing interactive systems. We explore multi-agents planning for tackling the combinatory issue when sharing interaction resources among interactive systems and UI elements. The gateway between HCI and planning is performed using Model Driven Engineering (MDE). Experience shows that MD