Introduction to the special issue

Abstract

The recent expansion of the Internet has opened the avenue to services supporting the access to remote data repositories, the search for information and documents, and the execution of various everyday activities, such as home banking and e-government. Moreover, the research about intelligent systems has enabled the human user to remotely pilot smart machines performing difficult or dangerous tasks. Unfortunately, the development of user interfaces supporting the interaction with complex services and devices has not kept the pace with the technological development, so that the potential offered by the technology is challenged by the limited usability of the new products and services. The gap between the user-oriented view of the offered service and the technical level concerning its implementation has to be filled in order to make machines and software systems acceptable to the end-user. Moreover, the user's trust in automated systems has to be enhanced, by taking predictability and controllability issues into account. The design and development of usable user interfaces has attracted the attention of various research communities. For instance, the Human Computer Interaction research has focused on the definition of methodologies for the development of user interfaces that meet the user's interaction requirements during the life cycle of products and services. Moreover, the User Modeling and Intelligent User Interfaces research has focused on the definition of techniques for the dynamic adaptation of services to the individual user's preferences. Furthermore, within the Adaptive Hypermedia field, researchers have developed Web-based systems that tailor the content, the interaction and the layout to the needs of users having heterogeneous knowledge, interests, and exploiting different devices to interact with the services (e.g., smart phones, PDAs, portable and desktop computers). Fundamental challenges that must be addressed in order to make products and services widely usable include: • The adaptation of User Interfaces to the user's device and to multiple communication channels, as well as to bandwidth and other related constraints. • The mediation between the user's interaction requirements and the technical aspects underlying the service execution. • The enhancement of the usability of automated decision makers and the satisfaction of user's requirements concerning the predictability and controllability of their behavior. • The support for ubiquitous and multimodal interaction with the user, taking not only technical issues, but also accessibility and pleasure requirements into account. • The availability of infrastructures facilitating the development of multi-platform services. • The provision of adaptive features and direct …