Completely Customizing Modern GUIs Through Command-Driven Interfaces

Abstract

An ideal user interface accommodates the requirements and abilities of its users, and every user has a specific set of needs that must be fulfilled in order for an interface to be useful. This thesis concentrates on using the post-deployment tailoring technique of customization in order to ensure that an interface meets a user's needs and abilities in a final, user-driven design step. To this end, the more entirely a UI can be customized, the more perfectly it can be transformed into a state that best suits its user. Very few systems offer complete customization: allowing the entirety of an interface to be customized, baring change to its interaction style. While a few systems do offer complete customization, no fully customizable system exists that is built using modern widget-based GUI's. This is the goal of the architecture described in this thesis, the Interface Manager. It uses interface building techniques to make cosmetic customizations and a command-driven style similar to that of Unix shells to make functionality customizations. This system allows interfaces to become well suited to their user, but it also offers open questions about user-initiated innovation in software and the scaling of visual interface design tools.