Users, systems and interfaces: a unifying framework for interaction

Abstract

We introduce a basic framework for the analysis of existing interactive systems which wll aslo serve for the principled design of more usable systems. We present a simple yet effective model of an interactive system that extends previous interaction frameworks. Within our framework, the user, system and interface are all represented equally. We also present several notions of distance as qualitative measurements of the interactive features of a system based on specific tasks. These notions of distance can be formalised to give an understandable quantitative approach required for principled design and analysis.