Intelligent User Interfaces for Correspondence Domains: Moving IUIs ‘Off the Desktop.’

This paper is about the elicitation of the requirements for an intelligent interface for a software test development environment that will accommodate the physically challenged (PC). This research explores the use of eye-tracking mechanisms and digital manipulative user interfaces that are especially enhanced for the PC. In addition these devices provide assistance for the knowledge elicitation phase for an Intelligent User Interface to such an environment. It was never a stated objective of PCTA (Physically Challenged Test Assistant) to include any intelligent augmentation of the environment. It was challenge enough to get a paraplegic to operate the software test environment. However, in the process of evaluating the data collected in the evaluation of the user interface it was discovered that empirical data existed to predict some of the impasses that occur in the software development and more uniquely in the software testing process.