Designing Flexible User Interfaces

Abstract

In the design of computer systems, human diversity and their specific needs have been neglected in the past, possibly because engineers were developing products for end users who were very much like themselves. The large impact that computer systems have nowadays on the increasing number of different users brings to consider traditional Human-Computer Interaction topics, such as user-centered design, usability engineering, accessibility, information visualization, very important also for Information Systems, since they influence technology usage in business, managerial, organizational and cultural contexts. People would like computer systems that can be tailored to their individual needs and working practices. To this aim, systems must be developed whose user interfaces is flexible, i.e., it permits end users to modify or add new functionalities, still being simple and easy to use, not requiring any programming knowledge. In this paper, we discuss an approach that gives end users the possibility to tailor presentation as well as functionalities of the system they use, thus supporting users to participate in the design of their tools.