Adaptive Interfaces

A Digital Economy requires that computer technologies and software be usable by people with very diverse skills and needs. To address this, we are exploring techniques to create more accessible software applications based on shared user modelling and adaptive interface design. Given information about personal preferences that are shared between multiple pieces of software, the goal is for applications to automatically customise the interface to a layout and interaction style that best suits the user, the device, and the environment.

Accessible Indoor Navigation and Digital TV Guide are two applications that serve as prototypes to test this approach.These tools connect to a set of web services to collect and store user preferences, building up a model of user abilities across applications. This allows the applications to proactively provide customised user interactions for giving individually tailored navigation instructions and TV information. These prototypes are currently being evaluated in both Dundee and Newcastle with SiDE User Pool participants having low vision or mobility needs.