DIADEM (DIalogue Architecture and DEsign Method) is a means of specifying user interfaces (UI) which allows improvements in quality and productivity throughout the software life-cycle. DIADEM is supported through DiademMaker, a tool that allows software developers to build UI specifications according to the DIADEM method in an interactive and friendly way.
The DIADEM method complements classical methods used to develop application software by implementing UI-specific activities, concerns and formalisms within the general software engineering process. It comprises a series of guides describing the approach (concepts, key activities, life-cycles, roles of people involved), together with a set of graphical elements and a book of general ergonomic rules and guidelines. With DIADEM, special graphical elements are used to describe the interactions (dialogue) between the user and the system in terms of a series of tasks. Each task has a strategy (a network of events, actions and transitions) which can be represented graphically. The DiademMaker tool allows the user to create and update diagrams for particular tasks, and to manage the consistency between them. When completed, the finished graphs can be easily integrated into specification documents. DiademMaker also supports the production of technical sheets describing the tasks in full, and the generation of final specification documents. The system is available for the personal computer (PC) under Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT, and for Sun SPARC under Solaris.