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research-article

Guigle: a GUI search engine for Android apps

Authors:

Carlos Bernal-Cárdenas,

Michele Tufano,

Denys PoshyvanykAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE '19: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings

Pages 71 - 74

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-Companion.2019.00041

Published: 25 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

The process of developing a mobile application typically starts with the ideation and conceptualization of its user interface. This concept is then translated into a set of mock-ups to help determine how well the user interface embodies the intended features of the app. After the creation of mock-ups developers then translate it into an app that runs in a mobile device. In this paper we propose an approach, called Guigle, that aims to facilitate the process of conceptualizing the user interface of an app through GUI search. Guigle indexes GUI images and metadata extracted using automated dynamic analysis on a large corpora of apps extracted from Google Play. To perform a search, our approach uses information from text displayed on a screen, user interface components, the app name, and screen color palettes to retrieve relevant screens given a query. Furthermore, we provide a lightweight query language that allows for intuitive search of screens. We evaluate Guigle with real users and found that, on average, 68.8% of returned screens were relevant to the specified query. Additionally, users found the various different features of Guigle useful, indicating that our search engine provides an intuitive user experience. Finally, users agree that the information presented by Guigle is useful in conceptualizing the design of new screens for applications.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/hqUuuMMj2BU

References

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Guigle http://www.guigle.com/.

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Cited By

Feng SMa SWang HKong DChen C(2024)MUD: Towards a Large-Scale and Noise-Filtered UI Dataset for Modern Style UI ModelingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642350(1-14)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642350
Feng SChen CXing ZDwyer M(2022)Gallery D.CProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings10.1145/3510454.3516873(80-84)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510454.3516873
Zhao TChen CLiu YZhu X(2021)guiganProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00074(748-760)Online publication date: 22-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00074
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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE '19: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings

May 2019

369 pages

Conference Chair:
Gunter Mussbacher
McGill University, Canada
,
General Chair:
Joanne M. Atlee
University of Waterloo, Canada
,
Program Chair:
Tevfik Bultan
University of California, Santa Barbara

Sponsors

SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS: Computer Society

Publisher

IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 25 May 2019

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ICSE '19

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT
IEEE-CS

ICSE '19: 41st International Conference on Software Engineering

May 25 - 31, 2019

Quebec, Montreal, Canada

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

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2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

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Citations

Cited By

Feng SMa SWang HKong DChen C(2024)MUD: Towards a Large-Scale and Noise-Filtered UI Dataset for Modern Style UI ModelingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642350(1-14)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642350
Feng SChen CXing ZDwyer M(2022)Gallery D.CProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings10.1145/3510454.3516873(80-84)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510454.3516873
Zhao TChen CLiu YZhu X(2021)guiganProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00074(748-760)Online publication date: 22-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00074
Said KNie LAjibode AZhou X(2020)GUI testing for mobile applications: objectives, approaches and challengesProceedings of the 12th Asia-Pacific Symposium on Internetware10.1145/3457913.3457931(51-60)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3457913.3457931
Chen JChen CXing ZXia XZhu LGrundy JWang J(2020)Wireframe-based UI Design Search through Image AutoencoderACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/339161329:3(1-31)Online publication date: 16-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3391613
Alahmadi MMalkadi AHaiduc S(2020)UI Screens Identification and Extraction from Mobile Programming ScreencastsProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1145/3387904.3389265(319-330)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3387904.3389265
Zhou HChen TWang HYu LLuo XWang TZhang WGrundy JLe Goues CLo D(2020)UI obfuscation and its effects on automated UI analysis for Android appsProceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3324884.3416642(199-210)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3324884.3416642
Kolthoff KBartelt CPonzetto SGrundy JLe Goues CLo D(2020)GUI2WiReProceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3324884.3415289(1297-1301)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3324884.3415289

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