Reflexive user interface

A reflexive user interface is one in which commands and perhaps other controls are defined in the interface itself. In other words, it permits its own command verbs and sometimes underlying code to implement these to be edited via the same user interface as the rest of its functions.

Contents

1 Origin of usage 2 Four levels of reflexivity 2.1 Verbs defined and used by oneself 2.2 Designs set and enforced by the end user 2.3 Policy set and enacted socially 2.4 Mechanical adaptation and recombination 3 Recursive, self-organizing, self-stabilizing 4 Extending senses

Origin of usage

This usage originated in the OOPSLA and CSCW research community in the late 1980s and today often is reflected in the name of specific tools, e.g. the IBM Reflexive User Interface Builder [1], which uses XUL: XML describing GUIs that are then automatically implemented by the Builder5. Twiki uses a similar facility to specify its menus. Some believe these tools abuse the word reflexive.

Four levels of reflexivity

That is probably inevitable as there are four distinct and different levels of reflexivity depending on how strictly one chooses to interpret the word, and the idea of control:

Verbs defined and used by oneself

In literate programming theory, this usage follows that in grammar, where a reflexive verb is a verb whose subject and object are the same, like "perjure" or "resign" or "suicide" or "logout", which one can only apply to oneself as an active verb . If the same person defines the verb as a command and then uses it, as they would in an agile method or other iterative development, it can be seen as reflexive. However this definition is very loose:

Designs set and enforced by the end user

All software engineering toolsets in which the code is defined using the toolset and mostly or only accessible via that toolset, e.g. Smalltalk, could likewise be described as reflexive. However, in actual usage only those tools that make user interface design markedly simpler for a non-programming end user are usually called "reflexive".

Policy set and enacted socially

In social software the definition is muddled by the question of who's we doing the action:

For instance, any Wikipedia policy can be edited by any user, and this has historically included a few verbs such as "revert" and "ban" that are not defined by mediawiki but by the social environment of Wikipedians. However, this would only be reflexive by strict definition if the code and all decisions were accessible via the wiki, and it were some form of democracy making the decisions.

Only then could it reasonably be said that the users, collectively, were actually controlling the command verbs.

Mechanical adaptation and recombination

Some theorists employ a much more rigorous definition, insisting that some mathematical reflexive relations such as equality, set inclusion , inequality and divisibility are also defined with respect to the set of commands in any such reflexive interface. That is, it will be possible to compare capabilities, deal with divisions and subsets of them, and create new interfaces combining these - all mechanically - each of which will be itself a subset of the supported set. Ideally such recombinations take place automatically, making an adaptive user interface that does not require any additional user interface design effort.

Recursive, self-organizing, self-stabilizing

A practical compromise actually used by designers is that reflexive means recursive, self-organizing, and employing negative feedback to stabilize itself. Usability work is often described as "iterative and reflexive" or "recursive and reflexive".

Designer Peter Wright states the issues in terms of a subject-object problem. To be reflexive is to be "always viewing experience through a person. Whether that is the first person or the third person or whether it is by recounting an experience to oneself or for others. This is not to be understood in some scientific way as an unfortunate consequence of our means of measurement. Rather it is central to what it means for something to be an experience. Without self and other, or subject and object interacting reflexively, there can be no experience." He also differentiates the recursive aspect in terms of five inter-related processes: anticipating, connecting, interpreting, reflecting, appropriating, and recounting. [2]

Extending senses

Designers sometimes liken the creation of the ideal reflexive user interface to extending the user's cognition itself, as if the digital media were being used to extend the senses. This view is common among followers of Marshall McLuhan who think of all media in this sense.