Populating a prototype with external data

Creating user interface (UI) prototypes is an important step when developing new software. Many applications, especially data intensive applications, end up displaying some form of data. A UI prototype for such an application can either display dummy data such as "Lorem ipsum..." or real data, such as the title for a specific movie. Populating the prototype with real data can be done by either manually entering it, or by referencing an external source. Manually entering and modifying data for multiple scenarios can be a tedious and selection biased process. Being able to reference an external data source can speed up the process as well as illustrate how the underlying data suits the designed UI. This thesis looks into how a prototype can be populated with external data by annotating an existing wireframe prototype and turning it into a runnable program. The developed tool builds on the work of Fredrik Larsen by incorporating functionality for reading and binding data from a persistent XMI file to the UI prototype. It expands on Fredrik Larsen's proposed annotation method by adding three new constructs, namely context, assignment and view component, each having their own area of functionality. The implemented tool was tested using three scenarios of different complexity to verify whether the proposed data binding method was viable, which the results indicated it was. The view component proved to be an especially valuable asset in order to provide modifiability and reuse within the wireframe prototype