Evaluating user interface adaptations at runtime by simulating user interaction

Adaptive user interfaces are commonly used for providing different layouts and information according to the current context-of-use. However, the complexity and heterogeneity of potential users, platforms and environments lead to a combinatorial explosion of variants, making it almost impossible to foresee all potential results of adaptations at design time. In this paper we present our work on the automatic evaluation of usability aspects of adaptive user interfaces at runtime which is supposed to be used complementary to design time usability evaluation. We show how a user interface model, providing different adaptation alternatives, can be combined with a model of the current user to simulate interaction and evaluate the feasibility of different adaptations.