Author(s):

Greene, Stephen; Finnegan, Jason

Title:

Usability of Mobile Devices and Intelligently Adapting to a User's Needs

Publication:

Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Information and Communication Technologies

Keywords:

adaptive user interfaces; appeal; attention; context-aware computing; distraction; interaction; mobile computing; usability

Paper Summary:

The authors present three issues to focus their research, including:

1. Are current mobile interfaces offering the full functionality to users that they are capable of?
2. Are the interfaces actually hindering users' abilities to complete their tasks?
3. Have interface designers taken a user-centric design approach to the interfaces?

The authors believe that "it is possible to build a system that can adapt to a user's needs and that the system can also adapt to a user based on their contextual information in real-time."

The authors next present an overview of usability problems that mobile devices suffer from, including:

• Problems with input/output
• Mobile context (how do users use mobile devices in the real world, with real distractions)
• Reduction in menus (how do you design a system that focuses on users' priorities and give users the information they need without requiring them to search through menus)

The authors also present several "open questions", such as what are users' goals, how do designers deal with the limited attention of users, how much will users tolerate in terms on speed, etc.

Based on these questions, the paper presents the authors' attempt to develop an Intelligent User Interface (IUI) that adapts to user's needs.

A - Z List    |    By Author    |    By Keyword    |    By Evaluation Technique    |    By Application