A USER INTERFACE ARCHITECTURE

Recent consideration of the conceptual processes involved in the design and use of interactive systems suggests that the underlying architecture of the systems will affect their eventual usability. However, 'user interface management systems', designed to provide architectural support for interaction, actually fail to address important human factors issues. British Telecom's Open Network Architecture distributed systems project (ONA-DS) user interface architecture (UIA) is based on a more adequate model of human-computer interaction, which allows for multi-level descriptions of an interaction. The UIA components involved in the management of an interaction, using these descriptions, include a user model, employed as the means for tailoring and adapting user interfaces to suit individuals' needs. The UIA will also form the framework for a flexible dialogue design environment, providing appropriate tools and notations for the design, prototyping, and evaluation of user interfaces.