Towards a general user model to develop intelligent user interfaces

Abstract

The way end-users interact with a system plays a crucial role in the high acceptance of software. Related to this, the concept of Intelligent User Interfaces has emerged as a solution to learn from user interactions with the system and adapt interfaces to the user’s characteristics and preferences. However, existing approaches to designing intelligent user interfaces are limited by their user models, which are not capable of representing each and every user characteristic valid for any context. This work aims to address this limitation by presenting a user model that can abstractly represent a wide set of user characteristics in any context of interaction. The model is based on a synthesis of previous works that have proposed specific user models. After the analysis of these works, a more sophisticated user model has been defined, including some required characteristics not existing in previous works. This model has been validated with 62 real end-users who have expressed the users’ characteristics that they consider as relevant to adapt the interaction. The results show that most of these characteristics can be represented by the proposed user model. This user model is the first step towards creating intelligent user interfaces that can adapt interactions to users with similar characteristics and preferences in similar contexts.