Open Issues for the development of 3D Multimodal Applications from an MDE perspective

Given its current state of the art, Model-Based UI Development (MBDUI) is able to fulfill the major requirements of desktop and mobile applications, such as form-based user interfaces that adapt to the actual context of use. More recent research deals with the development of 3D interactive multimodal environments. Though user-centered design is more and more driving the design of these environments, less attention is devoted to the development processes than to interactive tools supporting isolated phases in the realization process. In this paper we describe our findings when considering model-based development of 3D multimodal applications in the context of model-driven engineering. We concentrate on the requirements of such a process, the models being used and the transformations that are able to guide or even automate part of the development process for the envisioned applications. We conclude with some open issues that have been discovered. 1