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Top1. Introduction
A relatively recent design development in information technology is the principle of adaptable user-interface design. Adaptable user-interface design involves the user in the design of the system interface, including visual and auditory features (Akiki, Bandara, Arosha, & Yu, 2014). That is, the user has the ability to tailor the system interface to best meet their individual preferences. For example, the user can alter the appearance of screen graphics and sounds by choosing to install “Desktop Themes” available from Microsoft to their Windows operating system to match their personality or likes (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14023/windows-desktop-themes-with-custom-sounds). A potential advantage of an adaptable interface is that the user is in control of the individual appearance and interface features (Gullà, Cavalieri, Ceccacci, Germani, & Bevilacqua, 2015). This flexibility allows a user to not only alter the interface to their liking, but may also allow the system to be adjusted to multiple users with varied prior knowledge and cognitive abilities (Gudur, Blackler, Popovic, & Mahar, 2014).
However, adaptability of the user interface may result in disadvantages. For example, altering the interface may impact how well the system informs the user of potential problems that arise during the completion of computational tasks during the display of exception messages with accompanying auditory elements. Exception messages are common components of the information technology (IT) user interface and appear over the main window of an IT application program and often inform the user of computing problems, where each problem may possess different levels of “hazard” (Cooper & Reimann, 2014; Galitz, 2007; Shneiderman et al., 2018). Exception messages should communicate different levels of hazard in order to achieve “hazard matching.” Hazard matching occurs when the severity of the hazard communicated by the exception message, termed the “arousal strength” of the message, matches the level of hazard faced by the user. Hazard matching is widely recommended as a desirable result in that it improves the informativeness of exception messages and other warnings (Amer & Maris, 2007; Edworthy & Adams, 1996; Edworthy, 1998; Hellier, Wright, Edworthy, & Newstead, 2000; Hellier & Edworthy, 2006; Momtahan & Tansley, 1989; Wogalter & Silver, 1990).
Exception messages are often accompanied by auditory elements as an additional signal to the user. Similar to the other features of exception messages, auditory elements can be designed to catch the attention of the user to warn of potential technical problems if certain actions are taken or conditions occur (Amer & Maris, 2007). Good interface design warrants the design of auditory elements to communicate different levels of severity of a computing problem, thus facilitating hazard matching (Amer, Johnson, Maris, & Neal, 2013). But, if the user alters the auditory element via adaptable design there may be a violation of the effective design rule of consistency (Cooper & Reimann, 2014; Galitz, 2007; Shneiderman et al., 2018). This lack of consistency may degrade the nature of hazard matching due to confusion or misunderstanding. That is, if a given exception message appears on screen that should consistently inform the user of a given computing problem but the associated auditory element changes in a manner that alters the user’s perception of the underlying hazard, then consistency is violated.