Can Adaptive Interfaces Improve the Usability of Mobile Applications?

Abstract. Mobile applications are becoming increasingly widespread and complex. Many of these applications suffer from usability issues, including information overload, screen clutter, lack of task support and limited interaction me chanisms. Adaptive user interfaces (AUIs) have been proposed to address some of these usability issues. The aim of this paper is to investigate how AUIs can improve the usability of mobile applications. This paper discusses several simple types of adaptation that have been shown to yield significant usability benefits for mobile applications. Two case studies are presented to illustrate how an AUI can be incorporated into different types of mobile applications. This paper also discusses the lessons learned from these case studies and presents some implications for designing adaptive systems in the future

The New Grid

The New Grid seeks to provide mobile users with an additional method for off-grid communication, or communication without connection to Internet infrastructure. The motivation for this project was to find another alternative to Internet-dependent communication. Current Internet infrastructure is antiquated; it is expensive to maintain and expand, it has numerous vulnerabilities and high-impact points of failure, and can be rendered unusable for lengthy periods of time by natural disasters or other catastrophes. This current grid will eventually need to be replaced by a more modern, scalable, and adaptive infrastructure. The results of the projects research showed that implementing a library to allow for the creation of mobile peer-to-peer mesh networks could serve as a starting point for a transition from current Internet infrastructure to a more scalable, adaptive, and reliable Internet- independent network grid. Development of The New Grid largely followed the Rational Unified Process, in which the development process is split into four phases: requirements gathering, system design, implementation, and testing. Most of fall quarter was spent outlining functional requirements for the system, designing possible methods of implementation, and researching similar solutions that seek to transition mass mobile communication to a newer, more modern network grid. The New Grid differs from similar solutions because it has been implemented as a modular library. Current systems that allow for off-grid mobile connection exist as independent applications with a defined context and predetermined usability scope. We, the design team, found that implementing the system in the form of a modular library has multiple benefits. Primarily, this implementation would allow The New Grid to be deployed as widely as possible. Developers can both write applications around our library as well as include specific modules into existing applications without impacting other modules or introducing additional overhead into a system. Another benefit of deploying the system as a modular library is adaptability. The current, initial stable build of The New Grid uses Bluetooth Low Energy as its backbone for facilitating communication within large networks of mobile devices; however, this library could use any existing or future communication protocol to facilitate connection as long as a hook is written to allow The New Grid to interface with that protocol. Thus, The New Grid is not limited by which connection protocols currently exist, a property that other similar systems do not possess. The New Grid can be used in any application that requires connection between users. The most common applications would likely be messaging, file sharing, or social networking. While developers may find a variety of uses for The New Grid, its primary purpose is to facilitate reliable connection and secure data transfer in an environment with a large user base. Achieving this goal was proven feasible through research and testing the library with a small cluster of Android devices communicating solely with Bluetooth Low Energy. Expanding this group of a few phones to a larger mesh network of hundreds of devices was shown to be feasible through testing the librarys algorithms and protocols on a large network of virtual devices. As long as developers seek to create applications that allow users to communicate independent of Internet infrastructure, The New Grid will allow smartphone users to communicate off-grid and hopefully spur a switch from infrastructure-dependent mobile communication to user-centric, adaptive, and flexible connection

Towards a Holistic Approach to Designing Theory-based Mobile Health Interventions

Increasing evidence has shown that theory-based health behavior change interventions are more effective than non-theory-based ones. However, only a few segments of relevant studies were theory-based, especially the studies conducted by non-psychology researchers. On the other hand, many mobile health interventions, even those based on the behavioral theories, may still fail in the absence of a user-centered design process. The gap between behavioral theories and user-centered design increases the difficulty of designing and implementing mobile health interventions. To bridge this gap, we propose a holistic approach to designing theory-based mobile health interventions built on the existing theories and frameworks of three categories: (1) behavioral theories (e.g., the Social Cognitive Theory, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and the Health Action Process Approach), (2) the technological models and frameworks (e.g., the Behavior Change Techniques, the Persuasive System Design and Behavior Change Support System, and the Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions), and (3) the user-centered systematic approaches (e.g., the CeHRes Roadmap, the Wendel's Approach, and the IDEAS Model). This holistic approach provides researchers a lens to see the whole picture for developing mobile health interventions

A quantitative comparison of ad hoc routing protocols with and without channel adaptation

To efficiently support tetherless applications in ad hoc wireless mobile computing networks, a judicious ad hoc routing protocol is needed. Much research has been done on designing ad hoc routing protocols and some well-known protocols are also being implemented in practical situations. However, one major imperfection in existing protocols is that the time-varying nature of the wireless channels among the mobile terminals is ignored, let alone exploited. This could be a severe design drawback because the varying channel quality can lead to very poor overall route quality in turn, resulting in low data throughput. Indeed, better performance could be achieved if a routing protocol dynamically changes the routes according to the channel conditions. In this paper, we first propose two channel adaptive routing protocols which work by using an adaptive channel coding and modulation scheme that allows a mobile terminal to dynamically adjust the data throughput via changing the amount of error protection incorporated. We then present a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the two classes of ad hoc routing protocols. Extensive simulation results indicate that channel adaptive ad hoc routing protocols are more efficient in that shorter delays and higher rates are achieved, at the expense of a higher overhead in route set-up and maintenance. © 2005 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Integrated context-aware and cloud-based adaptive home screens for android phones

This is the post-print version of this Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 Springer VerlagThe home screen in Android phones is a highly customizable user interface where the users can add and remove widgets and icons for launching applications. This customization is currently done on the mobile device itself and will only create static content. Our work takes the concept of Android home screen [3] one step further and adds flexibility to the user interface by making it context-aware and integrated with the cloud. Overall results indicated that the users have a strong positive bias towards the application and that the adaptation helped them to tailor the device to their needs by using the different context aware mechanisms

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

A survey of self organisation in future cellular networks

This article surveys the literature over the period of the last decade on the emerging field of self organisation as applied to wireless cellular communication networks. Self organisation has been extensively studied and applied in adhoc networks, wireless sensor networks and autonomic computer networks; however in the context of wireless cellular networks, this is the first attempt to put in perspective the various efforts in form of a tutorial/survey. We provide a comprehensive survey of the existing literature, projects and standards in self organising cellular networks. Additionally, we also aim to present a clear understanding of this active research area, identifying a clear taxonomy and guidelines for design of self organising mechanisms. We compare strength and weakness of existing solutions and highlight the key research areas for further development. This paper serves as a guide and a starting point for anyone willing to delve into research on self organisation in wireless cellular communication networks

Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things - a survey

The next wave of communication and applications rely on the new services provided by Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human and machines future. The IoT services are a key solution for providing smart environments in homes, buildings and cities. In the era of a massive number of connected things and objects with a high grow rate, several challenges have been raised such as management, aggregation and storage for big produced data. In order to tackle some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to IoT as Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be considered in design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects. This problem can be addressed by deploying suitable "Middleware". Middleware sits between things and applications that make a reliable platform for communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and characteristics of middlewares. Next we study different architecture styles and service domains. Then we presents several middlewares that are suitable for CoT based platforms and lastly a list of current challenges and issues in design of CoT based middlewares is discussed.Comment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864817301268, Digital Communications and Networks, Elsevier (2017

Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things - a survey

The next wave of communication and applications rely on the new services provided by Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human and machines future. The IoT services are a key solution for providing smart environments in homes, buildings and cities. In the era of a massive number of connected things and objects with a high grow rate, several challenges have been raised such as management, aggregation and storage for big produced data. In order to tackle some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to IoT as Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be considered in design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects. This problem can be addressed by deploying suitable "Middleware". Middleware sits between things and applications that make a reliable platform for communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and characteristics of middlewares. Next we study different architecture styles and service domains. Then we presents several middlewares that are suitable for CoT based platforms and lastly a list of current challenges and issues in design of CoT based middlewares is discussed.Comment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864817301268, Digital Communications and Networks, Elsevier (2017