The Ubiquitous Interactor - Device Independent Access to Mobile Services

The Ubiquitous Interactor (UBI) addresses the problems of design and development that arise around services that need to be accessed from many different devices. In UBI, the same service can present itself with different user interfaces on different devices. This is done by separating interaction between users and services from presentation. The interaction is kept the same for all devices, and different presentation information is provided for different devices. This way, tailored user interfaces for many different devices can be created without multiplying development and maintenance work. In this paper we describe the system design of UBI, the system implementation, and two services implemented for the system: a calendar service and a stockbroker service

Generating speech user interfaces from interaction acts

ABSTRACT We have applied interaction acts, an abstract user-service interaction specification, to speech user interfaces to investigate how well it lends itself to a new type of user interface. We used interaction acts to generate a VoiceXML-based speech user interface, and identified two main issues connected to the differences between graphical user interfaces and speech user interfaces. The first issue concerns the structure of the user interface. Generating speech user interfaces and GUIs from the same underlying structure easily results in a too hierarchical and difficult to use speech user interface. The second issue is user input. Interpreting spoken user input is fundamentally different from user input in GUIs. We have shown that it is possible to generate speech user interfaces based on. A small user study supports the results. We discuss these issues and some possible solutions, and some results from preliminary user studies

Adaptive model-driven user interface development systems

Adaptive user interfaces (UIs) were introduced to address some of the usability problems that plague many software applications. Model-driven engineering formed the basis for most of the systems targeting the development of such UIs. An overview of these systems is presented and a set of criteria is established to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of the state-of-the-art, which is categorized under architectures, techniques, and tools. A summary of the evaluation is presented in tables that visually illustrate the fulfillment of each criterion by each system. The evaluation identified several gaps in the existing art and highlighted the areas of promising improvement

Automatically Generating Personalized User Interfaces with SUPPLE

Today's computer–human interfaces are typically designed with the assumption that they are going to be used by an able-bodied person, who is using a typical set of input and output devices, who has typical perceptual and cognitive abilities, and who is sitting in a stable, warm environment. Any deviation from these assumptions may drastically hamper the person's effectiveness—not because of any inherent barrier to interaction, but because of a mismatch between the person's effective abilities and the assumptions underlying the interface design. We argue that automatic personalized interface generation is a feasible and scalable solution to this challenge. We present our Supple system, which can automatically generate interfaces adapted to a person's devices, tasks, preferences, and abilities. In this paper we formally define interface generation as an optimization problem and demonstrate that, despite a large solution space (of up to 1017 possible interfaces), the problem is computationally feasible. In fact, for a particular class of cost functions, Supple produces exact solutions in under a second for most cases, and in a little over a minute in the worst case encountered, thus enabling run-time generation of user interfaces. We further show how several different design criteria can be expressed in the cost function, enabling different kinds of personalization. We also demonstrate how this approach enables extensive user- and system-initiated run-time adaptations to the interfaces after they have been generated. Supple is not intended to replace human user interface designers—instead, it offers alternative user interfaces for those people whose devices, tasks, preferences, and abilities are not sufficiently addressed by the hand-crafted designs. Indeed, the results of our study show that, compared to manufacturers' defaults, interfaces automatically generated by Supple significantly improve speed, accuracy and satisfaction of people with motor impairments.Engineering and Applied Science

Les COMETS : Une nouvelle Génération d'Interacteurs pour la Plasticité des Interfaces Homme-Machine

With the advances in networking and advances in miniaturization, wireless networksgeneralize and promote infiltration of ultra-light devices in businesses and homes: computers becomes diffuse, relegating the computer gray box with a vision of the past. Now, in the near future, the personal assistant (PDA) becomes universal remote; our everyday objects are amplified and become possible media interaction. The devices assemble, disassemble opportunistically, creating an interactive area located at the service of information. This evolution of the IT transformated the Human-Computer Interaction domain. If this vision appeals from the standpoint of use, it can scare the complexity in appearance "without limit" of its engineering. The methods and current tools have in fact not designed to design, develop and evaluate such HCI. This thesis deals with the engineering of advanced HCI. Explored path is that of plasticity.Avec les avancées des réseaux et les progrès en miniaturisation, les réseaux sans fil segénéralisent et favorisent l’infiltration de dispositifs ultra-légers dans les entreprises et les foyers : l’informatique devient diffuse, reléguant l’ordinateur boîte grise à une vision du passé. Désormais, dans un avenir proche, l’assistant personnel (PDA) devient télécommande universelle ; nos objets quotidiens s’amplifient et deviennent supports possibles à l’interaction. Les dispositifs s’assemblent, se désassemblent de manière opportuniste, créant un espace interactif au service d’une information située. Cette évolution de l’informatique métamorphose l’interaction Homme-Machine. Si cette vision séduit du point de vue de l’usage, elle peut effrayer par la complexité à l’apparence "sans limite" de son ingénierie. Les méthodes et outils actuels n’ont, en effet, pas été conçus pour concevoir, développer et évaluer de telles IHM. Cette thèse traite de l’ingénierie d’IHM avancées. La voie explorée est celle de la plasticité

A Design Rationale for Pervasive Computing - User Experience, Contextual Change, and Technical Requirements

The vision of pervasive computing promises a shift from information technology per se to what can be accomplished by using it, thereby fundamentally changing the relationship between people and information technology. In order to realize this vision, a large number of issues concerning user experience, contextual change, and technical requirements should be addressed. We provide a design rationale for pervasive computing that encompasses these issues, in which we argue that a prominent aspect of user experience is to provide user control, primarily founded in human values. As one of the more significant aspects of the user experience, we provide an extended discussion about privacy. With contextual change, we address the fundamental change in previously established relationships between the practices of individuals, social institutions, and physical environments that pervasive computing entails. Finally, issues of technical requirements refer to technology neutrality and openness--factors that we argue are fundamental for realizing pervasive computing. We describe a number of empirical and technical studies, the results of which have helped to verify aspects of the design rationale as well as shaping new aspects of it. The empirical studies include an ethnographic-inspired study focusing on information technology support for everyday activities, a study based on structured interviews concerning relationships between contexts of use and everyday planning activities, and a focus group study of laypeople’s interpretations of the concept of privacy in relation to information technology. The first technical study concerns the model of personal service environments as a means for addressing a number of challenges concerning user experience, contextual change, and technical requirements. Two other technical studies relate to a model for device-independent service development and the wearable server as a means to address issues of continuous usage experience and technology neutrality respectively

Engineering Adaptive Model-Driven User Interfaces for Enterprise Applications

Enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning systems have numerous complex user interfaces (UIs). Usability problems plague these UIs because they are offered as a generic off-the-shelf solution to end-users with diverse needs in terms of their required features and layout preferences. Adaptive UIs can help in improving usability by tailoring the features and layout based on the context-of-use. The model-driven UI development approach offers the possibility of applying different types of adaptations on the various UI levels of abstraction. This approach forms the basis for many works researching the development of adaptive UIs. Yet, several gaps were identified in the state-of-the-art adaptive model-driven UI development systems. To fill these gaps, this thesis presents an approach that offers the following novel contributions: - The Cedar Architecture serves as a reference for developing adaptive model-driven enterprise application user interfaces. - Role-Based User Interface Simplification (RBUIS) is a mechanism for improving usability through adaptive behavior, by providing end-users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout based on the context-of-use. - Cedar Studio is an integrated development environment, which provides tool support for building adaptive model-driven enterprise application UIs using RBUIS based on the Cedar Architecture. The contributions were evaluated from the technical and human perspectives. Several metrics were established and applied to measure the technical characteristics of the proposed approach after integrating it into an open-source enterprise application. Additional insights about the approach were obtained through the opinions of industry experts and data from real-life projects. Usability studies showed the approach’s ability to significantly improve usability in terms of end-user efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction