Awareness, Usage and Discovery of Swipe-revealed Hidden Widgets in iOS

International audienceRevealing a hidden widget with a dedicated sliding gesture is a common interaction design in today's handheld devices. Such "Swhidgets" (for swipe-revealed hidden widgets) provide a fast (and sometime unique) access to some commands. Interestingly, swhidgets do not follow conventional design guidelines in that they have no explicit signifiers, and users have to discover their existence before being able to use them. In this paper, we discuss the benefits of this signifierless design and investigate how iOS users deal with this type of widgets. We report on the results of a laboratory study and an online survey, investigating iOS users' experience with swhidgets. Our results suggest that swhidgets are moderately but unevenly known by participants, yet the awareness and the discovery issues of this design is worthy of further discussion

Investigating Performance and Usage of Input Methods for Soft Keyboard Hotkeys

Touch-based devices, despite their mainstream availability, do not support a unified and efficient command selection mechanism, available on every platform and application. We advocate that hotkeys, conventionally used as a shortcut mechanism on desktop computers, could be generalized as a command selection mechanism for touch-based devices, even for keyboard-less applications. In this paper, we investigate the performance and usage of soft keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys (abbreviated SoftCuts) through two studies comparing different input methods across sitting, standing and walking conditions. Our results suggest that SoftCuts not only are appreciated by participants but also support rapid command selection with different devices and hand configurations. We also did not find evidence that walking deters their performance when using the Once input method.Comment: 17+2 pages, published at Mobile HCI 202

Interagir en l'absence de signifiants : le cas des swhidgets

At the heart of this thesis is a common but problematic situation that users of digital systems often face in their daily interactions: to interact with the system, they need some knowledge of an interaction possibility, some piece of information about the interface, but this information is not provided in the context in which they need it. I call such interaction possibilities non-signified, and signifier-less designs the interfaces and interaction techniques that rely on non-signified interaction possibilities.An example of modern signifier-less design is what I call "swhidgets" for "SWIpe-revealed HIDden WIDGETS": widgets that are hidden under the screen bezels or other interface elements, out of view and not advertised by any graphical mark, but that can be revealed by dragging them into view with a swipe gesture relying on a physical manipulation metaphor. Swhidgets are an important component of touch-based smartphone and tablets interfaces, and will be the principal signifier-less design studied in this thesis.When facing a signifier-less design, users may be confused about what they should do and how to achieve their goals; or they might have to use suboptimal ways of achieving their goals because they are unaware of the existence of more efficient options. It is thus usually advised to avoid signifier-less designs. Yet, despite designers’ awareness of the problems they may cause, signifier-less designs are common in user interfaces. They thus deserve a deeper analysis than simply advising to avoid them in interface design. Indeed, there might be good reasons to apply this design: maybe they provide some benefits that are hard to see with our current understanding of these designs, or maybe there is no way to avoid them.In this thesis, I study the question of why designers would create interfaces that do not clearly expose some of their interaction possibilities, taking the case of swhidgets as an example and focus of inquiry. As a preliminary work on swhidgets, I focus on the following questions: What are signifier-less designs and what aspects of swhidgets design make them unique? Do users know the swhidgets provided by their system? How did they get to know them despite their lack of signifiers? What are the benefits of not having signifiers in the design of swhidgets?My contributions to these questions are:- I define signifier-less designs and provide observations of this type of design in user interfaces.- I provide an analysis of the fundamental notions required to define signifier-less designs: affordances, signifiers and semiotics.- I propose a model of user discovery and adoption of interaction techniques in general, relying on three dimensions and their relationships: users’ current knowledge and skills, users’ motivations, and the design means of informing users provided by the interfaces.- I propose the notions of Degree of Knowledge and Source of Knowledge derived from this model, that can be used in experiments to evaluate how well the participants know an interaction technique and how they discovered it.- I present the design and results of two studies on iOS swhidgets that investigate how well users known them, how they discover them, their reasons for not using them, how they generally feel about them, and how they integrate them in the way they think about their interactions with the system. These studies revealed that swhidgets were globally appreciated and relatively well known by users, although there is still room for improvement, notably for some specific swhidgets.I conclude with perspective for future works regarding the transfer of knowledge about swhidgets from one application to another, the pertinence of considering all aspects of user experience to understand the design of swhidgets, and the possibility to increase the discoverability of swhidgets by using animated transitions between interface views.Le cas d'un utilisateur confronté à une interface qui ne l'informe pas d'une possibilité d'interaction au moment où il en a besoin est un problème fondamental d'IHM. La présence de telles possibilités d'interaction em non-signalées est fréquente dans les interfaces homme-machine modernes et potentiellement problématique, rendant nécessaire l'étude des interfaces et techniques d'interaction dites sans signifiants.Un exemple de conception "sans signifiants" moderne est ce que j'appelle un Swhidget pour "SWIpe-revealed HIDden WIDGET": un composant d'interface normalement caché sous les bords de l'écran ou sous un autre objet, pouvant être révélé en le tirant à l'aide d'un geste de balayage selon une métaphore de manipulation physique. Les Swhidgets sont des composants importants des interfaces de téléphones et tablettes à écran tactile, et sont la principale conception sans signifiant étudiée dans cette thèse.En présence d'une conception sans signifiant, les utilisateurs peuvent être confus quant à ce qu'ils doivent faire pour atteindre leur but, ou être réduits à utiliser des méthodes sous-optimales parce qu'ils ne sont pas conscients de l'existence de meilleures alternatives. Il est donc généralement recommandé d'éviter de concevoir des interfaces sans signifiants. De telles interfaces sont pourtant courantes bien que les concepteurs soient conscient des problèmes qu'elles causent. Elles méritent donc une analyse plus approfondie, au delà du simple conseil de les éviter. En effet, il pourrait y avoir de bonnes raisons de concevoir des interfaces sans signifiants, qu'elles aient des qualités difficiles à mettre en évidence en l'état actuel de notre compréhension ou qu'il soit simplement impossible de les éviter.Dans cette thèse, j'analyse les raisons pouvant inciter à la conception d'interfaces qui n'exposent pas clairement les possibilités d'interaction qu'elles offrent, en prenant les Swhidgets comme objet d'étude principal. Pour cette étude initiale des Swhidgets, je me concentre sur les points suivants : que sont les conceptions sans signifiants et quels aspects des Swhidgets leur sont propres ? Les utilisateurs connaissent-ils les Swhidgets de leurs systèmes ? Comment les ont-ils connus malgré l'absence de signifiants ? Quels avantages y a-t-il à ne pas avoir de signifiants ?Les contributions de cette thèse sur ces points sont :- Une definition des conceptions sans signifiants basée sur des observations de telles conceptions dans des interfaces. - Une analyse des notions fondamentales requises pour la définition des conceptions sans signifiants: affordances, signifiants et sémiotique.- Un modèle de la découverte et adoption par les utilisateurs de techniques d'interaction en général, reposant sur trois dimensions et leurs relations: les compétences et connaissances actuelles des utilisateurs, leur motivations, et les moyens par lesquels une interface peut informer ses utilisateurs.- Les notions de degré de connaissance et de source de connaissance, dérivées de ce modèle, qui permettent d'évaluer expérimentalement à quel point les utilisateurs connaissent une technique d'interaction et comment ils l'ont découverte.- La conception et les résultats de deux expériences sur les Swhidgets d'iOS pour évaluer la connaissance qu'en ont les utilisateurs, comment ils les ont découvert, leurs éventuelles raisons de ne pas les utiliser, comment ils les perçoivent globalement et les intègrent dans leur façon de penser l'interaction. Ces études montrent que les Swhidgets sont globalement appréciés et relativement bien connus, tout en laissant de la place pour des améliorations, surtout pour certains Swhidgets.Cette thèse ouvre des perspectives concernant le transfert de connaissances entre applications, la pertinence du concept d'expérience utilisateur pour la compréhension des Swhidgets, et la possibilité de favoriser leur découverte lors de transitions animées entre vues

Investigating Performance and Usage of Input Methods for Soft Keyboard Hotkeys

International audienceTouch-based devices, despite their mainstream availability, do not support a unified and efficient command selection mechanism, available on every platform and application. We advocate that hotkeys, conventionally used as a shortcut mechanism on desktop computers, could be generalized as a command selection mechanism for touch-based devices, even for keyboard-less applications. In this paper, we investigate the performance and usage of soft keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys (abbreviated SoftCuts) through two studies comparing different input methods across sitting, standing and walking conditions. Our results suggest that SoftCuts not only are appreciated by participants but also support rapid command selection with different devices and hand configurations. We also did not find evidence that walking deters their performance when using the Once input method

Human-powered smartphone assistance for blind people

Mobile devices are fundamental tools for inclusion and independence. Yet, there are still many open research issues in smartphone accessibility for blind people (Grussenmeyer and Folmer 2017). Currently, learning how to use a smartphone is non-trivial, especially when we consider that the need to learn new apps and accommodate to updates never ceases. When first transitioning from a basic feature-phone, people have to adapt to new paradigms of interaction. Where feature phones had a finite set of applications and functions, users can extend the possible functions and uses of a smartphone by installing new 3rd party applications. Moreover, the interconnectivity of these applications means that users can explore a seemingly endless set of workflows across applications. To that end, the fragmented nature of development on these devices results in users needing to create different mental models for each application. These characteristics make smartphone adoption a demanding task, as we found from our eight-week longitudinal study on smartphone adoption by blind people. We conducted multiple studies to characterize the smartphone challenges that blind people face, and found people often require synchronous, co-located assistance from family, peers, friends, and even strangers to overcome the different barriers they face. However, help is not always available, especially when we consider the disparity in each barrier, individual support network and current location. In this dissertation we investigated if and how in-context human-powered solutions can be leveraged to improve current smartphone accessibility and ease of use. Building on a comprehensive knowledge of the smartphone challenges faced and coping mechanisms employed by blind people, we explored how human-powered assistive technologies can facilitate use. The thesis of this dissertation is: Human-powered smartphone assistance by non-experts is effective and impacts perceptions of self-efficacy

Software Usability

This volume delivers a collection of high-quality contributions to help broaden developers’ and non-developers’ minds alike when it comes to considering software usability. It presents novel research and experiences and disseminates new ideas accessible to people who might not be software makers but who are undoubtedly software users

Personalization platform for multimodal ubiquitous computing applications

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaWe currently live surrounded by a myriad of computing devices running multiple applications. In general, the user experience on each of those scenarios is not adapted to each user’s specific needs, without personalization and integration across scenarios. Moreover, developers usually do not have the right tools to handle that in a standard and generic way. As such, a personalization platform may provide those tools. This kind of platform should be readily available to be used by any developer. Therefore, it must be developed to be available over the Internet. With the advances in IT infrastructure, it is now possible to develop reliable and scalable services running on abstract and virtualized platforms. Those are some of the advantages of cloud computing, which offers a model of utility computing where customers are able to dynamically allocate the resources they need and are charged accordingly. This work focuses on the creation of a cloud-based personalization platform built on a previously developed generic user modeling framework. It provides user profiling and context-awareness tools to third-party developers. A public display-based application was also developed. It provides useful information to students, teachers and others in a university campus as they are detected by Bluetooth scanning. It uses the personalization platform as the basis to select the most relevant information in each situation, while a mobile application was developed to be used as an input mechanism. A user study was conducted to assess the usefulness of the application and to validate some design choices. The results were mostly positive

Online Privacy in Mobile and Web Platforms: Risk Quantification and Obfuscation Techniques

The wide-spread use of the web and mobile platforms and their high engagement in human lives pose serious threats to the privacy and confidentiality of users. It has been demonstrated in a number of research works that devices, such as desktops, mobile, and web browsers contain subtle information and measurable variation, which allow them to be fingerprinted. Moreover, behavioural tracking is another form of privacy threat that is induced by the collection and monitoring of users gestures such as touch, motion, GPS, search queries, writing pattern, and more. The success of these methods is a clear indication that obfuscation techniques to protect the privacy of individuals, in reality, are not successful if the collected data contains potentially unique combinations of attributes relating to specific individuals. With this in view, this thesis focuses on understanding the privacy risks across the web and mobile platforms by identifying and quantifying the privacy leakages and then designing privacy preserving frameworks against identified threats. We first investigate the potential of using touch-based gestures to track mobile device users. For this purpose, we propose and develop an analytical framework that quantifies the amount of information carried by the user touch gestures. We then quantify users privacy risk in the web data using probabilistic method that incorporates all key privacy aspects, which are uniqueness, uniformity, and linkability of the web data. We also perform a large-scale study of dependency chains in the web and find that a large proportion of websites under-study load resources from suspicious third-parties that are known to mishandle user data and risk privacy leaks. The second half of the thesis addresses the abovementioned identified privacy risks by designing and developing privacy preserving frameworks for the web and mobile platforms. We propose an on-device privacy preserving framework that minimizes privacy leakages by bringing down the risk of trackability and distinguishability of mobile users while preserving the functionality of the existing apps/services. We finally propose a privacy-aware obfuscation framework for the web data having high predicted risk. Using differentially-private noise addition, our proposed framework is resilient against adversary who has knowledge about the obfuscation mechanism, HMM probabilities and the training dataset

The NMC Horizon Report : 2014 Library Edition

Comprend des références bibliographiques