In context-aware systems, user interface adaptation often occurs automatically, offering limited transparency and minimal user control. To overcome this limitation, this research elaborates on the concept of the Extra-User Interface, an additional user interface layer designed to empower users by enabling real-time observation, customization, and steering of adaptation behaviours. Positioned above the primary user interface, an Extra-User Interface extends the meta-user interface concept by providing structured services, such as inspecting and modifying underlying user interface artefacts. To assess the impact of Extra-User Interfaces on user experience, we adopt a Goal-Questions-Metrics approach , focusing on user satisfaction, comprehension, and performance. The research follows a multi-layered method, combining conceptual development, model-based design, and empirical validation. As a proof of concept, a prototype was developed and tested in a mid-air gesture-controlled environment, showing how an Extra-User Interface can enhance user autonomy and efficiency in controlling adaptation. Moreover, the research explores the applicability of extra-user Interfaces in high-stakes domains through the development of a second prototype for a data visualization interface designed to support critical decision tasks. Contributions of this work are threefold: (1) a theoretical framework defining Extra-User Interface concepts and primitives; (2) a model-based approach for designing graphical user interfaces whose adaptation is controlled by an extra-user interfaces; and (3) the implementation and evaluation of Extra-User Interface environments in realistic settings. Preliminary results validate the feasibility and usefulness of Extra-User Interfaces as a user-centric solution for controllable user interface adaptation in ambient intelligence and ubiquitous computing.
Keywords : adaptive user interfaces , user control, extra-user interface , meta-user interface.
Chloé Faton, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations Julie Hermans, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
Based on a qualitative case study, this paper explores how Greenbuildings, a Belgian eco-construction venture, engages in future-making (FM) practices to render sustainable alternatives compulsory in an unsustainable industry. Compulsory futures, we find, are imagined futures shaped not by aspiration but by necessity, when ecological, health, or economic threats impose non-negotiable constraints on what must be excluded or transformed in the present. Drawing on Simon’s (1993, 1996) design theory and the FM literature, we identify practices that entrepreneurs engage in when making the future “compulsory”, “desirable” and “plausible”. We contribute to the FM literature by theorizing how entrepreneurs engage with undesirable aspects of the futures. We also extend the entrepreneurship-as-design (EaD) perspective by detailing how constrained environments prompt not just navigation but reconstruction of the problem space. In doing so, we show how designing within limits can become a generative and radical entrepreneurial response in the face of ecological breakdown.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship-as-design; Future-making; Case study.