Human interfaces for individuals, environment and society

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the development of human interfaces for individuals, environment, and society. The FRIEND21 (Future Personalized Information Environment Development) is proposed as a two-tiered structure including both cognitive and software architecture. The former emphasizes the structure that supports the user in a mental sense (Metaware), while the latter's structure realizes the dynamic characteristics of metaware in a structural and functional sense (agency model). Metaware has been structured to serve as a metaphor that will support a user's cognitive activities while the agency model is a user support system modeled to flexibly coordinate the numerous agents that execute functions. Metaware allows expressive power through the flexible, unrestricted, and dynamic combination of interface metaphors, much in the same way that the great range of human feelings can be expressed by means of virtually unlimited combinations of a limited vocabulary. To make this possible, the multiple-metaphor environment has been provided with three features: polysemy/synonymy, spatiality/temporality, and context-sensitivity.