Behavioural Prototyping©: Making Interactive and Intelligent Systems Meaningful for the User

摘要

Current studies in the field of assistive design highlight the aim to develop intelligent and interactive services capable of maintaining and augmenting support during broader conditions of decline in personal and infra structural resources (Bos, 2007). These systems are frequently challenged to produce measu-reable improvements in user learning and function while also responding to the attendant challenges of coherency, interoperability and usability (Manning and Benton, 2010). Such systems are frequently intended to build and transfer augmented coping capacity via the interaction of system- use and user-behaviour, essentially offering a personal learning space and functional resilience. The operating environment for many such systems can be found, for example within both the formal and informal care services. Challenges to the provision of care and the maintenance of personal choice continue to escalate, as does the pressure on systems designed to meet ever changing user needs and aspirations (Benton and Manning, 2008). In the context of health care, well documented resource and demographic challenges (Symonds et al, 2007, Manning et al, 2008), will escalate the need for system utility as a core source of user autonomy. Generally any interface between a system and user will be characterised by redundancy, a deficient use resulting from issues concerning misalignment between; accessibility, learning support and system functionality. Essential user flexibility, acceptance and acquisition of system based protocols will be influenced by the degree of 'personalisation' achieved by the system with a related impact on use (Rigby, 2010). In this context personalisation relates to the degree to which users' perceptual expectations and 'affordances' are aligned with system design and feedback. It is suggested that individual differences of; cognitive style, techno-acceptance and personality may be evaluated to form a Behavioural Prototype©, an evaluation of users' likely interactive expectations and behaviour with the system. This profile would provide a behavioural link between system design and a broader vision of user need, capacity and aspiration.