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This thesis discusses the challenges and opportunities facing the field of accessibility, particularly as computing becomes ubiquitous. It is argued that a new approach is needed that centres around adaptations (specific, atomic changes) to user interfaces and content in order to improve their accessibility for a wider range of people than targeted by present Assistive Technologies (ATs). Further, the approach must take into consideration the capabilities of people at the human level and facilitate collaboration, in planned and ad-hoc environments. There are two main areas of focus: (1) helping people experiencing minor-to-moderate, transient and potentially-overlapping impairments, as may be brought about by the ageing process and (2) supporting collaboration between people by reasoning about the consequences, from different users perspectives, of the adaptations they may require. A theoretical basis for describing these problems and a reasoning process for the semi-automatic application of adaptations is developed. Impairments caused by the environment in which a device is being used are considered. Adaptations are drawn from other research and industry artefacts. Mechanical testing is carried out on key areas of the reasoning process, demonstrating fitness for purpose. Several fundamental techniques to extend the reasoning process in order to take temporal factors (such as fluctuating user and device capabilities) into account are broadly described. These are proposed to be feasible, though inherently bring compromises (which are defined) in interaction stability and the needs of different actors (user, device, target level of accessibility). This technical work forms the basis of the contribution of one work-package of the Sustaining ICT use to promote autonomy (Sus-IT) project, under the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme of research in the UK. Test designs for larger-scale assessment of the system with real-world participants are given. The wider Sus-IT project provides social motivations and informed design decisions for this work and is carrying out longitudinal acceptance testing of the processes developed here.

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This thesis reports an ontology-based approach to automatic generation of highly tailored GUI components that can make customized data requests for the end users. Using this GUI generator, without knowing any programming skill a domain expert can browse the data schema through the ontology file of his/her own field, choose attribute fields according to business's needs, and make a highly customized GUI for end users' data requests input. The interface for the domain expert is a tree view structure that shows not only the domain taxonomy categories but also the relationships between classes. By clicking the checkbox associated with each class, the expert indicates his/her choice of the needed information. These choices are stored in a metadata document in XML. From the viewpoint of programmers, the metadata contains no ambiguity; every class in an ontology is unique. The utilizations of the metadata can be various; I have carried out the process of GUI generation. Since every class and every attribute in the class has been formally specified in the ontology, generating GUI is automatic. This approach has been applied to a use case scenario in meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) area. The resulting features of this prototype have been reported in this thesis.

The modern programs must have a comfortable graphical user interface (GUI). Graphical interface is the environment for creation of graphical window with visual elements: buttons, edit text boxes, check boxes, list boxes, menu, toolbars etc., where a user chooses appropriate problem conditions, input data and sets proper options. For the development of such programs visual programming environments C++ Builder, Delphi, Visual Basic etc. were developed a decade ago. Recently user graphical interface technology was also implemented in the Computer Algebra Systems Maple (www.maplesoft.com), Mathematica (www.wolfram.com) and MatLab (www.mathworks.com). The present work investigates Maple graphical user interface creation facilities. It is possible to create GUI with Maplets package or in Maplet Builder design environment. This work examines these two methods with examples. The GUI creation facilities were tried investigating the curve fitting methods of Maple system. Some applied programs, using Maple Curve Fitting package, were created in Maple visual environment. The practical problem of speech sound formants variation curves fitting was also investigated. For that task some programs were created in the Maple visual environment.

One of main task in information system development is to project good graphical user interface. It is used many different methods, tools and princess for automatic user interface generation. ODRES (output driven requirements engineering) method witch is developed in the department of information system has an ability to generate graphical user interface from its user developed specifications. These specifications are stored in specification storage – database and they are strictly defined. The tool used to generate graphical user interface from selected ODRES storage reads those specifications and transforms them into graphical elements. An engineer can change those elements. At the end of generation user interface prototype is saved in the same specifications storage.

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In the context of knowledge management, the challenge for organizations is to convert individual human knowledge into structural capital so that the knowledge becomes persistent in the organization, making it more accessible and hence more usable. How to codify the knowledge of a workforce, including the tacit knowledge of experts, and how to apply that codified knowledge with success are unresolved issues. The conversion of individual knowledge into structural capital is of particular relevance in the field of design. Design is a complex activity that creates valuable knowledge. However, that knowledge is often implicit, unstructured, and embedded in procedures, methods, documentation, design artifacts, and of course in the minds of designers and other project stakeholders. In addition, design teams are often multidisciplinary and include experts who apply tacit knowledge to arrive at solutions. Design projects extend over time so that the risk of losing design knowledge increases. Information in itself is not knowledge for the purposes of structural capital. A user interface (UI) design specification for example, does not capture the knowledge used to create that design. The specification tells us what the artifact should be, but it does not tell us how the design came to be or why it is the way it is. Design rationale (DR) is a field of study surrounding the reasoning behind design decisions and the reasoning process that leads to the design of an artifact. The objective of creating a design rationale is to make the reasons for design decisions explicit. Design space analysis (DSA) is one perspective on design rationale that explores alternative design solutions and the assessment of each against design objectives. The rationale behind design decisions provides insight about the design knowledge that was applied and is therefore, of interest to the structural capital of organizations. Moreover, the process of making the rationale explicit is of interest to the domain of user interface design. The challenge for UI designers and the question addressed in this research is how to make the design rationale explicit and use it to effectively support the design process? The proposed solution is to conduct design space analysiS as part of the process of de.slgn. To. test this solution it is important to explore the implications of generating design rationale in practice and to explore whether DSA reflects the knowledge that expert deSigners apply. The "DSA study" demonstrated and examined the use of design space analysis by UI experts in a long-term, practical, design setting. The findings suggest that design space analysis supports communication and the reasoning process, and it provides context around past design decisions. It was also found that conducting design space analysis encourages designers to accumulate design ideas and develop an understanding of design problems in a systematic way. In addition, the study showed that designers are capable of producing and using the notation, but that the effort to conduct DSA is an obstacle to its use in practice. Conclusions are drawn that DSA can structure the reasoning aspect of design knowledge. The "design skills study" identified the skills that user interface experts apply in practice. The findings indicate that many of the skills of UI experts correspond to the skills that are emphasized by DSA. The study emphasized the pervasiveness and importance of the communication activity in design, as well as the role of reasoning in communication and decision making. The study also identified design activities that receive comparatively little attention from UI experts and design skills that may be comparatively poor. Conclusions are drawn that DSA reflects in part the knowledge that designers apply in practice. Findings from the above studies point to two approaches that maximize the positive effects of DSA and minimize the effort to conduct a design space analysis. I describe these approaches as coaching and heuristics. Informal evaluations indicate that coaching and heuristics warrant further investigation. The findings from each of the studies have implications for design space analysis. These are discussed around several themes: the tension between the processes of designing and structuring design knowledge, the trade-off in effort between structuring design knowledge and interpreting unstructured design knowledge, design knowledge and the complementary roles of communication and documentation, and DSA as it pertains to expert and novice designers. It is inevitable that where there are new findings and solutions there are also new questions to be explored. Several interesting questions raised by these investigations suggest an agenda for future work.

ServiceSketch is a collaborative tabletop tool for service design. It was developed to address some of the challenges designers face when developing service systems, including the dynamic, intangible nature of service and the complexity of coordinating multiple stakeholders over time and space. The concept for the tool draws from literature on service design, tangible user interfaces, and co-creation. It was also informed by user research sessions with graduate design students. The interface of ServiceSketch consists of a large multi-touch surface display that reacts to finger touches and a provided set of physical objects. Both the hardware and software development of ServiceSketch are described in this document. ServiceSketch was evaluated with groups of graduate design students who were asked to perform small group service design activities using the tool. These sessions showed that ServiceSketch was successful in supporting common service design processes and even inspired many participants to suggest possible future developments for the tool. ServiceSketch also seemed to encourage a playful, collaborative approach to service design. The results of the project hint at the possibilities for a new breed of service design tool, one that focuses on facilitating conversations about service through an engaging, interactive medium.