Rejecting Adaptive Interface

TL;DR

This paper critiques adaptive interfaces, arguing they assume designers know best, and advocates for user-driven applications that empower users to customize interfaces dynamically during runtime.

Contribution

It introduces a new paradigm of user-driven applications that allow real-time customization, challenging the traditional adaptive interface approach.

Findings

Adaptive interfaces rely on designer assumptions about user needs.

User-driven applications enable full control over interface customization.

This approach shifts programming philosophy towards user empowerment.

Abstract

Programs have to be designed in such a way as to make them looking good and being handy for all users. Adaptive interface, with all the numerous achievements throughout 30 years of its history, contains and in reality is based on one fundamental flaw - on the assumption that designer knows better than anyone else what is good for users in each and all cases. Programs of the new type - user-driven applications - still deliver to users the best results of developers' work but at the same time give users the full control over applications and in this way really allow each user to change an application in such a way as he wants it to look at each particular moment. Users can move and resize each and all of the screen objects while an application is running, and this changes the whole programming philosophy.