Informalisms for Accessible Domain-Specific Modeling Language Engineering

Abstract

Developing complex software requires interaction and communication between teams that often takes place in the form of informal diagrams and sketches. However, the creation and interpretation of such documents without complete definitions can cause ambiguities or noise that hinder collaboration and utility in the long term. Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (DSMLs) are a convenient way to create a common basis for communication with well-defined structure and interpretation. However, in some domains such as video games, the domain itself may change during the prototyping phase. The DSMLs thus need to co-evolve with these changes to match the flexibility that sketches offer. In this paper, we introduce a framework to create flexible DSMLs through sketches. The proposed framework extracts the structure and constructs of the original sketches to convert them into a vocabulary encoded as an ontology. It then uses user feedback to create rules and inferences that result in a consistent classification. The framework thus maps the informal sketch to a formal representation and creates a consistent syntax for the sketch which can be used to create a formal DSML. We evaluate the framework with sketches from video game level design as a case study.