Dark Mode Preferences: Exploring User Motivations in Interface Theme Selection

In a world that is increasingly digital, the interfaces through which we interact with our technology play a critical role in our daily experiences. One important aspect of interface design is theming, which allows users to personalize their visual interaction with software applications and websites. Theming itself is a varied concept, but it enables users to tailor their digital environments according to their preferences, thereby enhancing usability and user satisfaction. Among various theming options, ’Dark mode’ has risen to prominence as a notable design trend in recent years. The adoption of Dark mode by major software platforms and applications signifies its impact and growing relevance. However, the key factors that lead to its adoption are highly debated among end users. In addition, many websites and applications have yet to incorporate a Dark mode feature. For this reason, understanding what leads to these preferences has practical implications for web developers and designers as well. To better understand and evaluate the motivations behind users’ Dark mode theme selection, a survey was conducted. The survey employed a questionnaire where the questions were rooted in a set of background hypotheses that are believed to be influential in determining why users opt for Dark or Light mode. These background hypotheses were formed using the literature existing in the field. The results of the survey suggest that there is no single driver for Dark mode selection, rather, users might be weighing Dark mode’s visual appeal against functional benefits like reduced eye strain, focus, power savings, and select a theme based on these assumptions. A subset of users also tailor their own interfaces more than others, where the implications of application specificity rises to question. In addition, age also plays a factor in the selection, but only to a degree.Digitaalisessa vuorovaikutuksessa käyttöliittymät ovat keskiössä. Yksi tärkeä käyttöliittymäsuunnittelun näkökulma ovat teemat, joiden avulla käyttäjät voivat yksilöidä oman kokemuksensa sovelluksissa ja verkkosivustoilla. Teemojen käyttö on monipuolinen ilmiö, mutta viime kädessä ne sallivat käyttäjien mukauttaa digitaalista ympäristöään heidän mieltymystensä mukaisesti parantaen näin käytettävyyttä ja käyttäjätyytyväisyyttä. Yksi suosituimmista teemavaihtoehdoista on ’Tumma tila’ eli ’Dark Mode’. Se on noussut merkittäväksi trendiksi viime vuosina erityisesti suurten ohjelmistoyritysten ja suosittujen sovellusten vauhdittamana. Kuitenkin ne avaintekijät, jotka johtavat sen käyttöönottoon, ovat kiistanalaisia. Näistä tekijöistä myös käydään kiivaita keskusteluja loppukäyttäjien joukossa. Lisäksi monet verkkosivustot ja sovellukset eivät ole vielä sisällyttäneet Dark Mode -ominaisuutta alustalleen. Tästä syystä teemamieltymysten ymmärtäminen on tärkeää myös web-kehittäjille ja sovellusten suunnittelijoille. Käyttäjien teeman valintaperusteiden ymmärtämisen ja arvioinnin parantamiseksi suoritettiin kattava kyselytutkimus. Kyselyssä käytettiin kyselylomaketta, jonka kysymykset perustuivat taustaoletuksiin, joiden uskotaan vaikuttavan käyttäjien päätöksiin valita joko tumma tai vaalea teema. Nämä taustaoletukset muodostettiin olemassa olevan alan kirjallisuuden perusteella. Kyselytutkimuksen tulokset viittaavat siihen, että tumman teeman valintaan ei ole yksittäistä merkittävää tekijää. Sen sijaan käyttäjät saattavat punnita tumman teeman visuaalista viehätysvoimaa toiminnallisiin hyötyihin, kuten esimerkiksi silmien rasituksen vähentämiseen, keskittymiseen, virrankulutukseen ja valita näiden olettamusten perusteella oman teemansa. Osa käyttäjistä myös mukauttaa omia käyttöliittymiään enemmän kuin toiset, jolloin sovelluskohtaiset valinnat tulevat ilmi. Lisäksi ikä vaikuttaa valintaan, mutta ainoastaan tietyssä määrin

Design and Evaluation of Menu Systems for Immersive Virtual Environments

Interfaces for system control tasks in virtual environments (VEs) have not been extensively studied. This paper focuses on various types of menu systems to be used in such environments. We describe the design of the TULIP menu, a menu system using Pinch Gloves™, and compare it to two common alternatives: floating menus and pen and tablet menus. These three menus were compared in an empirical evaluation. The pen and tablet menu was found to be significantly faster, while users had a preference for TULIP. Subjective discomfort levels were also higher with the floating menus and pen and tablet

Augmenting User Interfaces with Haptic Feedback

Computer assistive technologies have developed considerably over the past decades. Advances in computer software and hardware have provided motion-impaired operators with much greater access to computer interfaces. For people with motion impairments, the main di�culty in the communication process is the input of data into the system. For example, the use of a mouse or a keyboard demands a high level of dexterity and accuracy. Traditional input devices are designed for able-bodied users and often do not meet the needs of someone with disabilities. As the key feature of most graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is to point-and-click with a cursor this can make a computer inaccessible for many people. Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an important area of research that aims to improve communication between humans and machines. Previous studies have identi�ed haptics as a useful method for improving computer access. However, traditional haptic techniques su�er from a number of shortcomings that have hindered their inclusion with real world software. The focus of this thesis is to develop haptic rendering algorithms that will permit motion-impaired operators to use haptic assistance with existing graphical user interfaces. The main goal is to improve interaction by reducing error rates and improving targeting times. A number of novel haptic assistive techniques are presented that utilise the three degrees-of-freedom (3DOF) capabilities of modern haptic devices to produce assistance that is designed speci�- cally for motion-impaired computer users. To evaluate the e�ectiveness of the new techniques a series of point-and-click experiments were undertaken in parallel with cursor analysis to compare the levels of performance. The task required the operator to produce a prede�ned sentence on the densely populated Windows on-screen keyboard (OSK). The results of the study prove that higher performance levels can be i ii achieved using techniques that are less constricting than traditional assistance

Target Acquisition in Multiscale Electronic Worlds

Since the advent of graphical user interfaces, electronic information has grown exponentially, whereas the size of screen displays has stayed almost the same. Multiscale interfaces were designed to address this mismatch, allowing users to adjust the scale at which they interact with information objects. Although the technology has progressed quickly, the theory has lagged behind. Multiscale interfaces pose a stimulating theoretical challenge, reformulating the classic target-acquisition problem from the physical world into an infinitely rescalable electronic world. We address this challenge by extending Fitts’ original pointing paradigm: we introduce the scale variable, thus defining a multiscale pointing paradigm. This article reports on our theoretical and empirical results. We show that target-acquisition performance in a zooming interface must obey Fitts’ law, and more specifically, that target-acquisition time must be proportional to the index of difficulty. Moreover, we complement Fitts’ law by accounting for the effect of view size on pointing performance, showing that performance bandwidth is proportional to view size, up to a ceiling effect. The first empirical study shows that Fitts’ law does apply to a zoomable interface for indices of difficulty up to and beyond 30 bits, whereas classical Fitts’ law studies have been confined in the 2-10 bit range. The second study demonstrates a strong interaction between view size and task difficulty for multiscale pointing, and shows a surprisingly low ceiling. We conclude with implications of these findings for the design of multiscale user interfaces

A platform for developing and fine tuning adaptive 3D navigation techniques for the immersive web

Navigating through a virtual environment is one of the major user tasks in the 3D web. Although hundreds of interaction techniques have been proposed to navigate through 3D scenes in desktop, mobile and VR headset systems, 3D navigation still poses a high entry barrier for many potential users. In this paper we discuss the design and implementation of a test platform to facilitate the creation and fine-tuning of interaction techniques for 3D navigation. We support the most common navigation metaphors (walking, flying, teleportation). The key idea is to let developers specify, at runtime, the exact mapping between user actions and virtual camera changes, for any of the supported metaphors. We demonstrate through many examples how this method can be used to adapt the navigation techniques to various people including persons with no previous 3D navigation skills, elderly people, and people with disabilities.This work has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and FEDER under grant TIN2017-88515-C2-1-R, by EU Horizon 2020, JPICH Conservation, Protection and Use initiative (JPICH-0127) and the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación, grant PCI2020-111979 Enhancement of Heritage Experiences: the Middle Ages; Digital Layered Models of Architecture and Mural Paintings over Time (EHEM).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Design rules and guidelines for generic condition-based maintenance software's Graphic User Interface

The task of selecting and developing a method of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) for a Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) system, is investigated in this thesis. Efficiently and accurately communicating machinery health information extracted from Condition Monitoring (CM) equipment, to aid and assist plant and machinery maintenance decisions, is the crux of the problem being researched. Challenges facing this research include: the multitude of different CM techniques, developed for measuring different component and machinery condition parameters; the multitude of different methods of HCI; and the multitude of different ways of communicating machinery health conditions to CBM practitioners. Each challenge will be considered whilst pursuing the objective of identifying a generic set of design and development principles, applicable to the design and development of a CBM system's Human Machine Interface (HMI). [Continues.

Developing virtual reality applications: The design and evaluation of virtual reality development tools for novice users.

Developing applications for Virtual Reality(VR) systems is difficult because of the special- ized hardware required, complexity of VR software, and the technical expertise needed to use both together. We have develop tools and applications that support the authoring of virtual reality applications. The tools will support development of VR applications based on common requirements of the hardware and architecture used in VR systems. We developed support for animations, geometry morphs, deformable geometry, advanced particle systems, importing digital assets, embedding a scripting language virtual machine, sound library wrappers, video library wrappers, and physics library wrappers for the OpenSG framework. The KabalaEngine was developed to use the supporting libraries previously men- tioned in a clustered VR system using OpenSG\u27s clustering capabilities. The KabalaEngine has an expert graphical user interface that can be used for developing virtual environments. Finally, we developed a graphical user interface for novice users of the KabalaEngine. We found that users of the KabalaEngine were able to use the interface to produce three different complex virtual environments with 10-15 different 3D objects arranged in a meaningful way in fifty minutes