Key Contribution

1978

Adaptable Interfaces for Interactive System
E.A.Edmonds, Proc. Workshop Comp. Skills and Adapt. Systems, Liverpool University, pp 145-152.

ABSTRACT

It has been seen that, at least in the case of managers, there is significant discontent with the man/machine interfaces provided. It was further observed that the provision of an increased range of facilities did not noticeably improve the situation. It would seem that what is needed in such cases is a complex system that can be tailored to the user’s needs ion the light of experience.
When a systems designer is faced with the problem of designing the software for the man/machine interface he can thus be helped if he can economically delay his decisions until the system can be tried out with its potential users. Ideally it should be easy to modify the interface from time to time to meet the needs of changing circumstances and users. It might further to valuable to provide a variety of interfaces to one system, especially where the users have diverse skills and status. One solution to these problems, is firstly, to provide software tools that make the writing and changing of the interface a simpler task, and, secondly, to allow a number of versions of the interface to co-exist in the system.