A Tool for Characterizing and Quantifying Adaptability and Adaptivity

The need for adaptation can be largely justified today by the increasing use of a large variety of interactive services by the whole population using various computer devices in different technical and social environments. Adaptation can apply to many aspects of software: presentation, data, services or assistance according to many factors like user characteristics, interaction platforms, environment characteristics and activity characteristics. Several other key dimensions of adaptation like who is adapting and when the adaptation occurs should be considered. Then, it becomes very hard to characterize how adaptable is a system. This paper first presents the multiple faces of adaptability, which lead to a detailed set of aspects and factors that help characterizing adaptability of a system. In order to provide a tool for comparing systems, the paper proposes a first quantification technique for calculating several values, called global, semi-global and local adaptation degrees. Keywordsadaptation degree, adaptability, characterization,