A Process-Oriented Interactive Design Environment for Automatic User-Interface Adaptation

In the design of user interfaces that adapt automatically to end-users and usage contexts, designers should be prepared to cope with large design spaces; these spaces will be necessary to accommodate design constraints posed by the diversity in the target user population and the various contexts of use. Adaptation-oriented design is considered a powerful design recipe addressing the compelling requirements of customization, accessibility, and high quality of interaction. Under this perspective, it must be carefully planned, designed, accommodated, and conducted within the life cycle of interactive systems, from the early exploratory phases of design and prototyping to evaluation, implementation, and deployment. Despite recent progress, the practice of designing automatic user-interface adaptations remains difficult, due to intrinsic complexity of the task and the current limited expertise of designers and practitioners. Toward overcoming such a difficulty, this article presents MENTOR, a tool providing (a) practical integrated support for all phases of adaptation design, through appropriate editing facilities; (b) practical support for a “smooth transition” from design to development through the availability of automated verification mechanisms for the designed adaptation logic, as well as the automated generation of “ready-to-implement” interface specifications; and (c) support for the progressive accumulation of design cases and of the related design experience and knowledge, in particular regarding adaptation. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION, 20(2), 79–116 Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.