Anatomy

Biological anatomy is the scientific study of the structure and function of organisms and their parts. It includes the appearance and position of the various parts, the materials from which they are composed, their locations and their relationships with other parts. (Wiki)

If we examine this definition closely, again we can find a close correlation between the anatomy of a complex biological system and the anatomy of a complex software application system. Both complex systems are composed from may smaller specialized components working together to make the system work.

You can think of the function of UI as the function of the physical visible parts of the body. They interact with the outside world as well as with the inside world.

The body anatomy is an Intelligent composition of many smaller specialized components. In order to apply a BIOOP approach to the function of UI, we need to map the Body Anatomy to the UI Anatomy. This looks like the following:

The Body Anatomy The UI Anatomy

Creatures Documents Organ systems Compositions Organ layouts Layouts & Regions Organs Blocks Tissue Cell Types Cells Cells Organelles Elements