User-Centered Design of Geographic Interactive Applications: From High-Level Specification to Code Generation, from Prototypes to Better Specifications

International audienceThis paper deals with models and tools allowing designers of geographic web application to focus on the design work rather than on the related coding problems. The contributions of this paper are a specific design model and its associated design environement. The proposed design model is composed of elements that can be translated, through transformation model technics, into executable source code taking into account high-level specifications of the designers. This automated code generation property offers a design approach based on short cycles where designers may adjust their specifications until the generated application matches their requirements. To facilitate this process, the proposed model has been integrated into a graphical web-based environment allowing designers to visually express their specifications and then to generate and to execute the specified application