The Requirements Engineering of User Freedom

In this paper we explore a group of properties of interactive systems (by which we mean the whole system of computers, users and other features of the working environment) that have in common a notion interaction freedom. We shall argue that properties within this category are often discussed imprecisely. What we mean by interaction freedom here is the flexibility of an interactive system to switch between activities and the freedom of the user to choose options, and to be aware of his or her own progress. Our aim is to understand these ideas more precisely in terms of an interaction framework [6, 3] so that they can be used by cognitive modellers in understanding the consequences of such flexibility on learning or using a computer system, or by system designers in understanding how such properties may be built into an interactive system.