Automated macro systems which apply re-use to a user's input are a possible solution to the problems of customising an interactive system to the needs of the user. More useful than simple re-use would be a system that makes use of general patterns in users' behaviour and encapsulates this knowledge for application in similar, yet unfamiliar, circumstances. This process we term generalisation. This paper outlines some issues involved in controlling generalisation and the presentation and interaction with these macros, and specifies applicable heuristics. Finally the architecture for building an adaptive agent to perform the whole process is presented, with an example prototype operating on UNIX command-line interaction.

Keywords: adaptive interfaces, interface customisation, interface transformation, command reuse, agent modelling, initiative.

Introduction

One example of demonstrational interfaces (Myers, 1991) — automated macro creation — has been shown to be a promising area for adaptive system research previously by Greenberg (1990) and Crow & Smith (1992). Crow & Smith have extended the simple re-use of previous command entries (the history/tool-based systems of Greenberg) from a single line to an inferred macro. Macros are a concept that users are already familiar with for automation.

Re-use, however, is limited to situations corresponding exactly to those which have occurred before. Whilst it has been shown that these situations happen reasonably frequently (Greenberg & Witten, 1993a; Greenberg & Witten, 1993b) for single line re-use (a result which has not been investigated for multi-line re-use), both single-line and multi-line macro re-use break down in situations which differ slightly from the original. In both cases the re-use system is of no help.