In one aspect the invention relates to a method of associating an element of a user-interface to a current state of a property in a system including an application having a plurality of components, wherein at least one component has a property, wherein each property is identified with an identifier. The method comprises associating the element of the user-interface with a property path, the property path including a concatenation of a plurality of identifiers, the concatenation of identifiers defining a path through the components of the application to a property at the end of the concatenation, and mapping the property path to a current state of the property at the end of the path defined by the concatenation of identifiers, to associate the element of the user-interface with the current state of that property.