Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!alchemy!rloon From: rloon@praxis.cs.ruu.nl (Ronald van Loon) Newsgroups: comp.human-factors Subject: Re: adaptive user interfaces Message-ID: <1991Jun19.095117.19080@cs.ruu.nl> Date: 19 Jun 91 09:51:17 GMT References: <1991Jun12.182221.10179@cs.sfu.ca> <1991Jun16.205355.12316@psych.toronto.edu> <1991Jun17.190956.11212@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <20689@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Sender: rloon@cs.ruu.nl (Ronald van Loon) Organization: Utrecht University, Dept. of Computer Science Lines: 40 In <20689@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> chalek@rosings.crd.ge.com (catherine chalek) writes: ||In the discussions on adaptive user interfaces, there seems to be some ||confusion between customizable interfaces and adaptive interfaces. ||It seems to me that adaptive interfaces are interfaces that change ||themselves based upon whatever rules the developers coded. The only ||part that the user plays is to perhaps initiate the adaption and ||accept/reject the adaption. In a customizable interface, the user ||is responsible for initiating the changes and specifying the changes ||(selecting from among the possible changes). What she/he can change ||is of course limited to what the developers allow users to change. ||In the first case, the user wouldn't have to have much proficiency with ||the system. In the second case, she/he probably would. || ||catherine It seems to me that an adaptive interface is just a special case of a customizable interface. Please correct me if I am wrong. As an aside, I am working on an (object-oriented) UIMS, in which the interface configures itself on a) settings used in other -similar- programs, b) user-defaults (I want this kind of input represented as this type of input-object) and c) developer-defaults. The user can indicate how the programinput should be arranged on the screen (this includes reordering and sizing, but it also includes type-changing, like changing a slider into a dial or an "edit-control", and hiding (the object-value is set once and used in subsequent use of the program.) As you probably have noticed, I am strongly in favour of a user- customizable interface. After all, the developer is not the one using the program, the user is - he should be the one in control, working the program as he wants it to work, not vice versa. But that's just MHO. -- Ronald van Loon (rloon@praxis.cs.ruu.nl) "Howdy Folks, I'm Oedipus Tex, you may have heard of my brother Rex..." - P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742?) "Oedipus Tex"