Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
10.3.3.
Adaptation
The diversity of interactions that multimodal interfaces offer, their flexibility as
well as their intuitive and natural nature, make them apt to target different user
categories. These properties also give them important abilities enabling them to
accommodate frequent modifications that the physical environment can undergo and
optimally exploit the physical resources of the systems that it hosts. Consequently,
they become particularly interesting to use in the context of an ambient environment
that is subject to frequent evolutions. This is why we envisage adaptation from the
point of view of multimodality. Our system will need to “intelligently” exploit all
the modalities that it could have at its disposal, to communicate a piece of
information to a user [RIS 05], [ROU 06].
10.4. The KUP model
Over 30 years, several models of software architecture have been suggested.
Among those, we can cite model-view-controller (MVC [KRA 88]), presentation-
abstraction-control (PAC [COU 87]) or Arch [BAS 92]. These architectures
emphasize two components:
- The
model
of information to be presented. It represents the abstraction of the
problem to be dealt with, in the form of business data and logic. It is directly linked
to the
functional core
of a given application (name given by ARCH; PAC calls it
abstraction
). In our model, we will denote this component K, as it provides
knowledge.
- A practical, even physical, implementation of the
interface
with the user as
well as the associated interactions (
view-controller
for MVC;
presentation
for
PAC). In our model, we will denote this component P, as we are concerned with
output only - the
presentation
of information.
10.4.1.
Source of knowledge, users and presentation mechanisms
In order to design a system corresponding to the description that was given in
section 10.3, we introduce a new architecture model for our system. As well as the
two aforementioned entities K and P, this model includes a third entity entitled U,
corresponding to the logical representation of the user. Indeed, in the context of the
design of our mobile and opportunistic system, it seems advisable to separate two
kinds of actions:
- the
supply
of a piece of information by the functional core to the user;
- the
presentation
of this information destined for the user.
