Increasing Engagement with the Library via Gamification

One of the main challenges faced by providers of interactive information access systems is to engage users in the use their systems. The library sector in particular can benefit significantly from increased user engagement. In this short paper, we present a preliminary analysis of a university library system that aims to trigger users' extrinsic motivation to increase their interaction with the system. Results suggest that different user groups react in different ways to such 'gamified' systems

A hotkey interaction technique that promotes hotkeys

Hotkeys provide fast interactions to support expert performance. Compared to the traditional pointer-based selection of commands, hotkeys have the advantage in reducing task completion time. However, research shows that users have a tendency of favoring menu selections. This is partially caused by how hotkeys are displayed in most linear and toolbar menus. This thesis provides a review of key findings from literature that aim to promote hotkeys. On the base of these findings, this thesis develops design criteria for hotkey displays that promote hotkey use. This thesis also proposes a new interaction technique which displays hotkeys on the keyboard. Finally, a cognitive model is constructed to describe a user’s decision-making process of choosing between hotkeys and pointer-based selections when this new hotkey display technique is presented

Understanding and Increasing Users' Interaction Vocabulary

Rencontres doctoralesInternational audienceThis paper describes my PhD topic which is focused on the design of tools, environments and interaction techniques that help users increasing their interaction vocabulary. I de ne users’ vocabulary as the degree of knowledge of all the possible functions and modalities a user can use to interact with a computing system. I introduce my rst project which is about hidden buttons. This project aims at identifying the bene ts and drawbacks of hidden buttons, de ning a design space, and proposing di erent design ideas to implicitly and explicitly incite users to discover hidden controls.Ma thèse concerne la conception d’outils, d’environnements et de techniques d’interaction aidant les utilisateurs à développer leur vocabulaire d’interaction, dé ni comme le niveau de connaissance de l’ensemble des fonctions et modalités qu’une personne peut utiliser pour interagir avec un système informatique. Je présente également un premier projet concernant les boutons cachés, dont le but est d’identi er les avantages et inconvénients de ces boutons, de dé nir un espace de conception, et de proposer di érentes idées visant à permettre aux utilisateurs de découvrir les boutons cachés de manière implicite ou explicite

Réduire l'Aversion aux Erreurs pour Aider la Transition Novice-Expert avec Fast Tap

National audienceExpert interaction techniques such as gestures or hotkeys are more efficient than traditional WIMP techniques because it is often faster to recall a command than to navigate to it. However, many users seem to be reluctant to switch to expert interaction. We hypothesize the cause might be the aversion of making errors. To test this, we designed two intermediate modes for the FastTap interaction technique, allowing quick confirmation of what the user has retrieved from memory, and quick adjustment if she has made an error. We investigated the impact of these modes and of various error costs in a controlled study (N=36). We found that participants adopted the intermediate modes, that these modes reduced error rate when error cost was high, and that they did not substantially change selection times. However, while it validates the design of our intermediate modes, we found no evidence of greater switch to memory-based interaction, suggesting that reducing the error rate is not sufficient to promote expert use of techniques.Les techniques d'interaction expertes comme les vocabulaires gestuels ou les raccourcis clavier sont plus efficaces que les techniques WIMP traditionnelles. Il est en effet plus rapide de se rappeler une commande plutôt que de la retrouver dans des menus. Cependant, la plupart des utilisateurs semblent réticents à passer aux interactions qui se basent sur leur mémoire. Nous pensons que la cause pourrait être due à leur aversion à faire des erreurs. Pour tester cette hypothèse, nous avons conçu deux modes intermédiaires pour la technique d'interaction FastTap, qui permet de rapidement confirmer ce que l'utilisateur s'est rappelé de mémoire, et d'ajuster si une erreur a été faite. Nous avons étudié l'impact de ces deux modes intermédiaires et de différents coûts d'erreur dans une étude contrôlée (N=36). Nous avons trouvé que les participants ont adopté les modes intermédiaires, que ces modes réduisaient le taux d'erreur quand le coût de l'erreur était important, et qu'ils n'ont pas affecté de manière significative les temps de sélection. Cependant, bien que les résultats valident la conception de nos modes intermédiaires, nous n'avons pas trouvé de preuve sur un plus grand passage aux interactions qui se basent sur la mémoire. Cela suggère que réduire le taux d'erreur n'est pas suffisant pour promouvoir l'utilisation experte des techniques

What is Interaction for Data Visualization?

International audienceInteraction is fundamental to data visualization, but what "interaction" means in the context of visualization is ambiguous and confusing. We argue that this confusion is due to a lack of consensual definition. To tackle this problem, we start by synthesizing an inclusive view of interaction in the visualization community-including insights from information visualization, visual analytics and scientific visualization, as well as the input of both senior and junior visualization researchers. Once this view takes shape, we look at how interaction is defined in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). By extracting commonalities and differences between the views of interaction in visualization and in HCI, we synthesize a definition of interaction for visualization. Our definition is meant to be a thinking tool and inspire novel and bolder interaction design practices. We hope that by better understanding what interaction in visualization is and what it can be, we will enrich the quality of interaction in visualization systems and empower those who use them

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

IconHK: Using Toolbar Button Icons to Communicate Keyboard Shortcuts

International audienceWe propose a novel perspective on the design of toolbar buttons that aims to increase keyboard shortcut accessibility. IconHK implements this perspective by blending visual cues that convey keyboard shortcut information into toolbar buttons without denaturing the pictorial representation of their command. We introduce three design strategies to embed the hotkey, a visual encoding to convey the modifiers, and a magnification factor that determines the blending ratio between the pictogram of the button and the visual representation of the keyboard shortcut. Two studies examine the benefits of IconHK for end-users and provide insights from professional designers on the practicality of our approach for creating iconsets. Building on these insights, we develop a tool to assist designers in applying the IconHK design principle

Emergeables: Deformable Displays for Continuous Eyes-Free Mobile Interaction

ABSTRACT In this paper we present the concept of Emergeables -mobile surfaces that can deform or 'morph' to provide fully-actuated, tangible controls. Our goal in this work is to provide the flexibility of graphical touchscreens, coupled with the affordance and tactile benefits offered by physical widgets. In contrast to previous research in the area of deformable displays, our work focuses on continuous controls (e.g., dials or sliders), and strives for fully-dynamic positioning, providing versatile widgets that can change shape and location depending on the user's needs. We describe the design and implementation of two prototype emergeables built to demonstrate the concept, and present an in-depth evaluation that compares both with a touchscreen alternative. The results show the strong potential of emergeables for on-demand, eyes-free control of continuous parameters, particularly when comparing the accuracy and usability of a high-resolution emergeable to a standard GUI approach. We conclude with a discussion of the level of resolution that is necessary for future emergeables, and suggest how high-resolution versions might be achieved