Assistant agents for the world wide web intelligent interface design challenges

The development of ‘intelligent’ or ‘adaptive’ user interfaces has been a strong research theme in Human–Computer Interaction for many years, with the terms often used interchangeably. In this article we will argue that seeing these terms as interchangeable can be misleading and can have implications for the expectations of systems both from the designer’s and user’s perspectives. We will suggest that the emphasis at the interface should be on adaptation, leaving intelligent behaviour to the user. The article argues that realistic expectations of available interaction information must be maintained when specifying the behaviour of an adaptive interface, such as the one containing agents. This article illustrates the process of the design and implementation of a set of software agents which act as Web Assistants, aiding the user in browsing the world wide web (WWW): issues in specifying the agents’ functionality and adaptation characteristics; issues in designing the adaptation and inference rules required for each agent and implementing and integrating them within a user interface. The process raises both architectural and implementation issues which lead to conclusions drawn at the end of the article, concerning adaptivity versus intelligence and considering specifically the quality of interaction information available and the need to maintain realistic expectations on the part of the designers of adaptive systems.