Introduction

Systems which adapt and respond to the user and/or their environment.

Most systems are adaptive in some way!

• Show new page when you click on a button.
• Change picture on a timer.
• Etc.

But some systems react beyond this minimal level.

• Intelligent adaptivity: AI?

Levels of adaptivity (Browne et al., 1990)

1. Produce change in output depending on input

2. Respond to sequences of input – so has some ‘memory’

3. Monitor effect of adaptation and evaluate/change based on this

4. Has internal model of the interaction and adapt based on expected effect

5. Has higher-level reasoning, can change the internal models of interactions

Domain models

If you want to adapt to your environment, you need to have some representation of that environment and what aspects mean what adaptation.

The domain model describes the agent’s representation of the domain. It may do so at all or any of three levels of description:

• Physical
  • Physical characteristics, such as colour, time, etc.
• Conceptual
  • Concepts such as ‘button’, ‘header’, ‘sender’, etc.