Transparency in adaptive mobile user interfaces

User interfaces that enable us to use complicated systems have become omnipresent. Being it through desktop, tablet or mobile devices, a great deal of our interactions with interactive systems is perceived through graphical user interfaces. One of these user interfaces is the adaptive user interface, which adapts according to a user s interactions. This type of interactive system keeps track of a user s actions through a personalized user model. Users can experience great advantages from having personalized user interfaces: imagine different contexts being triggered depending on certain situations, all with great ease of access. Nevertheless, users will perceive these changes differently. In order to communicate these changes in an effective way, certain ways of transparently guiding the user have been proposed. In this thesis guidelines and principles to facilitate adaptive user interfaces are explored and applied to a novel mobile prototype, hence the title adaptive mobile user interfaces . This resulted in a transparent prototype, which effectively communicated change in the form of prompts and additional options to alter the changes. The second, non- transparent prototype, did not communicate these changes and was not alterable. In order to construct a viable evaluation of the prototype, physiological changes in the form of skin conductance data were tracked in order to measure participants stress levels. Additional user questionnaires were used to accompany this data. The prototypes were tested by two groups of participants in the form of a first usage and a second usage scenario. The first group perceived the transparent prototype to be highly likeable and effective, but the skin conductance data seemed to contradict this matter. Participants who tested the non-transparent prototype expressed less overall satisfaction towards the this type of prototype, results opposing the outcome of the skin conductance data. Therefore, the hypothesis that the non-transparent prototype would result in more perceived stress as opposed to the transparent prototype was only partially supported

Reducing complexity of consumer electronics interfaces using commonsense reasoning

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-100).User interfaces to consumer electronics devices - Video recorders, phones, cameras, washing machines, microwave ovens, etc. - are getting too complicated to be easily used by ordinary consumers. We believe that what is responsible for such complication is a design philosophy which simply maps functions the device can perform to controls like buttons and menu items. That leaves the users with the difficult cognitive task of mapping their goals onto the devices' capabilities - a frustrating and error-prone process. Our hypothesis is that we can provide better assistance to the user using Commonsense Reasoning leading to shorter interactions with the devices. Commonsense can infer the users' likely goals from watching their actions, and anticipate what capabilities of the device can fulfill the users' needs. As devices gain networking capabilities and interact with other devices, Commonsense can also help devices cooperate in support of the users' goals.by José Humberto Espinosa Christlieb.S.M