Achieving Comfort and Security in the Use of Software Systems

The terms “comfort” and “security” when applied to a software system refer respectively to the sensations of the user and to attributes of the user‘s performance. Comfort describes the user‘s feeling of ease when interacting with the system, which can be partly achieved by familiarity, e.g. a consistent look-and-feel with other systems, but at a deeper level requires that the user be happy (at some sufficient level of understanding) with the workings of the system, the significance of its outputs, etc. Security means that the user is less likely to make mistakes due, for example, to a flawed understanding of the system‘s limitations. These qualities can be achieved by the provision of co-operative explanatory behaviour, which is the goal of the I-SEE project (ESPRIT P6013). The detection of and response to implicit information needs, the tailoring of the response to the user‘s knowledge and interests, and the justification of system reasoning in domain terms are all important ways of achieving this behaviour.