EvIcon: Designing High-Usability Icon with Human-in-the-loop Exploration and IconCLIP

Interface icons are prevalent in various digital applications. Due to limited time and budgets, many designers rely on informal evaluation, which often results in poor usability icons. In this paper, we propose a unique human-in-the-loop framework that allows our target users, that is novice and professional user interface (UI) designers, to improve the usability of interface icons efficiently. We formulate several usability criteria into a perceptual usability function and enable users to iteratively revise an icon set with an interactive design tool, EvIcon. We take a large-scale pre-trained joint image-text embedding (CLIP) and fine-tune it to embed icon visuals with icon tags in the same embedding space (IconCLIP). During the revision process, our design tool provides two types of instant perceptual usability feedback. First, we provide perceptual usability feedback modelled by deep learning models trained on IconCLIP embeddings and crowdsourced perceptual ratings. Second, we use the embedding space of IconCLIP to assist users in improving icons' visual distinguishability among icons within the user-prepared icon set. To provide the perceptual prediction, we compiled IconCEPT10K, the first large-scale dataset of perceptual usability ratings over 10,000 interface icons, by conducting a crowdsourcing study. We demonstrated that our framework could benefit UI designers' interface icon revision process with a wide range of professional experience. Moreover, the interface icons designed using our framework achieved better semantic distance and familiarity, verified by an additional online user study.     

Improving Usability Perception of Error-Prone AI Speakers: Elaborated Feedback Mitigates Negative Consequences of Errors

ABSTRACT

Users of voice user interface (VUI) often encounter errors, such as when a VUI attempts to recognize a user’s voice inputs or execute tasks. Conversation is prone to errors, and in the collaborative perspective, communicators manage common ground together to handle erroneous situations. Adopting a collaborative view of conversation, we propose that a VUI can address different types of errors by providing users with feedback to aid them in developing common ground to communicate more effectively. To test this proposal, we conducted a 2 (error type: recognition vs. execution error) × 2 (feedback elaboration: present vs. absent) mixed-design experiment in which users interacted with a VUI speaker and evaluated its usability in these four modes. Participants reported greater acceptance of feedback and higher usability perception for a speaker returning execution errors than for one returning recognition errors, particularly when the speaker presented feedback articulating reasons for the errors. This finding indicates that a VUI can employ feedback explaining the causes of errors to facilitate the development of common ground and to minimize the negative consequences of errors.     

End Users at the Bazaar: Designing Next-Generation Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

The "bazaar" metaphor has developed a lasting popularity in software engineering, especially as software architectures have evolved from monoliths to service orientation. Nevertheless, the metaphor is limited because it doesn't consider end users, those who develop software for themselves. Introducing such an end user, the "prosumer," to the bazaar not only suggests a changing division of work in software development but also calls for different functionality and architectural choices. The authors evaluated changing software architectures from an end-user development (EUD) perspective, taking the case of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as traditionally monolithically designed systems moving toward service orientation. On the basis of the study's findings, which indicated problems with the systems' technical flexibility, the authors developed a tool set for fostering EUD activities. Their new architecture for ERP systems enables end users to create their own solutions.     

Integration,optimization and usability of enterprise applications

Many enterprises rely on a wide variety of collaborative applications in order to support their everyday activities and to share resources. The collaborative applications are typically designed from scratch if the existing applications do not meet the enterprise's evolving needs. This incurs significant costs, and inconvenience. In this paper we present a case study of six applications (Sage 200, Gold-Vision CRM system, E-Commerce System, Gold-Vision Connect System, Realex Transaction and Spindle Document Automation Tool) within an enterprise. These applications are working in isolation. Therefore, sharing of information and data among these applications is carried out manually which imposes additional burden on their users and causes performance degradation. In this paper, we address this problem by integration and optimization of these applications by applying Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach. We also address the usability problems of these applications. We present comparative evaluation results that show significant improvement in ease and performance of user tasks using integrated applications.     

Software framework concept with visual programming and digital twin for intuitive process creation with multiple robotic systems

With the progressive digitalization in industrial manufacturing, the usage of complex robotic systems in both intralogistics and production is expected to increase. This proposes a challenge for planners and shop floor workers, as programming and interacting with these various systems leads to a high cognitive load. Especially the broad range of different manufacturer specific software leads to a number of problems, e.g. the program-synchronization between different systems and the often necessary workshops for workers. These problems can lead to inefficient programming and planning operations, bad worker satisfaction and human errors. In this paper, we present a modular, system agnostic and human centered software framework that unifies the programming of different systems, to enable centralized and intuitive system programming for non-expert operators. Our software framework utilizes visual programming concepts together with an integrated digital twin of the factory and a novel graph-based programming interface. We explain our concept in detail and describe our validation through integration into a realistic industrial setup with three different systems. In addition, we provide an evaluation of our concept's usability with an experimental user study and discuss the results of the study and the software implementation. Our study results show that even non-technical users are able to use our software after a brief introduction to create complex processes that involve multiple machines working in parallel. All users reported high usability and expert users reported that the visual process editor has enough features to create processes for industrial applications. Finally, we conclude this paper by providing an outlook on future work and use-cases of our software.     

Determining the effectiveness of the usability problem inspector: a theory-based model and tool for finding usability problems

Despite the increased focus on usability and on the processes and methods used to increase usability, a substantial amount of software is unusable and poorly designed. Much of this is attributable to the lack of cost-effective usability evaluation tools that provide an interaction-based framework for identifying problems. We developed the user action framework and a corresponding evaluation tool, the usability problem inspector (UPI), to help organize usability concepts and issues into a knowledge base. We conducted a comprehensive comparison study to determine if our theory-based framework and tool could be effectively used to find important usability problems in an interface design, relative to two other established inspection methods (heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough). Results showed that the UPI scored higher than heuristic evaluation in terms of thoroughness, validity, and effectiveness and was consistent with cognitive walkthrough for these same measures. We also discuss other potential advantages of the UPI over heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough when applied in practice. Potential applications of this work include a cost-effective alternative or supplement to lab-based formative usability evaluation during any stage of development.     

Systematic evaluation of design choices for software development tools

Most design and evaluation of software tools is based on the intuition and experience of the designers. Software tool designers consider themselves typical users of the tools that they build and tend to subjectively evaluate their products rather than objectively evaluate them using established usability methods. This subjective approach is inadequate if the quality of software tools is to improve and the use of more systematic methods is advocated. This paper summarises a sequence of studies that show how user interface design choices for software development tools can be evaluated using established usability engineering techniques. The techniques used included guideline review, predictive modelling and experimental studies with users.     

An investigation on Ribbon interface design guidelines for people with less computer literacy

In the recent years, there is an intense competition between software development companies to design better interfaces. In this marketing rat race, Ribbon interface came to make software user interface easier. After the introduction of Ribbon by Microsoft, it was widely used by various software development companies. Ribbon is a replacement for menus and toolbars and it tends to organize tools in tabs based on their similarities. Although Ribbon interface has many advantages, previous researches have shown that there are serious usability issues that hinder usage of Ribbon interfaces for users with less computer literacy. In order to solve Ribbon interfaces usability issues, this study tried to introduce Ribbon interface design guidelines by focusing on the issues related to users with less computer literacy. In this study two separate sets of moderated (in-person) usability testing were used. The first set evaluated the usability issues of an experimental Ribbon interface software in terms of both visual and cognitive issues. The second set was used to evaluate the Ribbon interface prototype that was designed based on the discovered usability issues in the first usability test. In order to ensure the validity of the data, the researchers tried to triangulate the data collection process by collecting data from different sources, namely, quantitative measurement of participants' performance, direct observation, and interview. Based on the comparison of the usability tests results which points out the factors that have led to participants' performance improvement in the prototype version, a number of guidelines are extracted for Ribbon interfaces. These guidelines are applicable to Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint and most of the software that can be developed with Ribbon interface. Putting these guidelines into action, self-learning would be promoted and learning issues of users with less computer literacy would be decreased.     

TADEUS: seamless development of task-based and user-orientedinterfaces

Task-based and user-oriented user interfaces utilize knowledge about user tasks and user characteristics to the utmost extent. They support users throughout their work flows, and must be constructed by a development process that avoids loss of application context and involves user feedback, from requirements specification to code generation. The concepts behind the task analysis/design/end users systems (TADEUS) approach to enable seamless task-based development are a semantically rich representation scheme, a model-driven development procedure, a diagrammatic notation and unifying specification scheme. Thus, interactive applications can be developed seamlessly. Specifications comprise problem domain knowledge, work processes, user roles and personal profiles, as well as interaction modalities (required for task accomplishment). For user-interface prototyping the TADEUS environment contains a model interpreter that executes structure and behavior specifications. This way, early feedback on task-based portals can be provided by users. In this paper we detail the latest developments in the TADEUS project when implementing a work-process based usability life cycle. We review the underlying methodology and the features of the TADEUS environment, in order to demonstrate the benefits for developers and users resulting of smooth transition support for and between the different stages of development     

Usability and software architecture

The role of software architecture with respect to usability has evolved over the past 20 years. The architectures of the 1980s and early 1990s assumed that usability was primarily a property of the presentation of information. Therefore, simply separating the presentation from the dialogue and application made it easy to modify that presentation after user testing. A more popular belief in the 1990s was that usability concerns greatly affected system functionality as well as the presentation. This emphasis took attention away from architectural support (beyond separation). Achieving the correct functionality for a given system became paramount. It is our observation that even if presentation and functionality of a system are well designed, the usability of a system can be greatly compromised if the underlying architecture does not support human concerns beyond modifiability. This paper will present a new role for software architecture in usability, preliminary research and practice stemming from this role and a research agenda for the future.     

Supporting device discovery and spontaneous interaction with spatial references

The RELATE interaction model is designed to support spontaneous interaction of mobile users with devices and services in their environment. The model is based on spatial references that capture the spatial relationship of a user’s device with other co-located devices. Spatial references are obtained by relative position sensing and integrated in the mobile user interface to spatially visualize the arrangement of discovered devices, and to provide direct access for interaction across devices. In this paper we discuss two prototype systems demonstrating the utility of the model in collaborative and mobile settings, and present a study on usability of spatial list and map representations for device selection.     

Collaborative visualization of engineering processes using tabletop augmented reality

3D computer visualization has emerged as an advanced problem-solving tool for engineering education and practice. For example in civil engineering, the integration of 3D/4D CAD models in the construction process helps to minimize the misinterpretation of the spatial, temporal, and logical aspects of construction planning information. Yet despite the advances made in visualization, the lack of collaborative problem-solving abilities leaves outstanding challenges that need to be addressed before 3D visualization can become widely accepted in the classroom and in professional practice. The ability to smoothly and naturally interact in a shared workspace characterizes a collaborative learning process. This paper introduces tabletop Augmented Reality to accommodate the need to collaboratively visualize computer-generated models. A new software program named ARVita is developed to validate this idea, where multiple users wearing Head-Mounted Displays and sitting around a table can all observe and interact with dynamic visual simulations of engineering processes. The applications of collaborative visualization using Augmented Reality are reviewed, the technical implementation is covered, and the program’s underlying tracking libraries are presented.     

Design Principles-Based Interactive Learning Tool for Solving Nonlinear Equations

Interactive learning tools can facilitate the learning process and increase student engagement, especially tools such as computer programs that are designed for human-computer interaction. Thus, this paper aims to help students learn five different methods for solving nonlinear equations using an interactive learning tool designed with common principles such as feedback, visibility, affordance, consistency, and constraints. It also compares these methods by the number of iterations and time required to display the result. This study helps students learn these methods using interactive learning tools instead of relying on traditional teaching methods. The tool is implemented using the MATLAB app and is evaluated through usability testing with two groups of users that are categorized by their level of experience with root-finding. Users with no knowledge in root-finding confirmed that they understood the root-finding concept when interacting with the designed tool. The positive results of the user evaluation showed that the tool can be recommended to other users.     

Why usability gets lost or usability in in-house software development

This study tries to shed some light on what happens to usability and occupational health issues in a bespoke software development project. Usability is an essential quality in software, in particular in a work context where poor usability and other risk factors related to the software and computers may cause health problems. We have interviewed a number of software developers, usability people and users about their attitudes to and practices for integrating usability and users' health concerns in software development. The interviews were conducted in two Swedish organisations with in-house development of bespoke software. Our main conclusion is that several factors combine to push usability and occupational health matters aside, some of which are attitudes to usability and users' health issues, unclear responsibilities, poor support for user-centeredness and usability in software development models, ineffective user participation and usability and users' health being ignored or forgotten in decisions about the software, its use and its design.     

Exploring multi-user interactions with dynamic NFC-displays

Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging technology for touch-based mobile interactions with single- and multi-tagged objects. Although the latter may allow for simultaneous and collaborative interactions, most prototypes were not designed for multiple users and were only evaluated with single-user interactions. In this paper, we investigate the design, usability and user experience of multi-user interactions on dynamic NFC-displays. These interactive surfaces use a grid of NFC-tags for the direct manipulation of projected application user interfaces. In two user studies with three prototypes for multi-user interaction, we evaluated the performance of dynamic NFC-displays, interactions among users and the interplay between mobile devices and large displays.     

Adapting card sorting for blind people: Evaluation of the interaction design in TalkBack

This article reports the results of a research project conducted to address the lack of feedback provided by generic user eXperience (UX) design methods, specifically in the case of applications for blind users. The objective of this research was to determine whether the application of a modified card sorting interaction design method with blind users can provide valuable insights into the desirable architecture of the menus in an interactive software system. For the analysis of the effectiveness of this approach, we performed the test with 15 blind users, using a modified semi-closed card sorting method, focusing on the menu structure of specific software (Android TalkBack). As a result, we obtained significant feedback for menu organization that included the users suggestions for new tasks and categories. Based on these data, we recommend the use of the modified card sorting interaction design method to evaluate the usability of applications for blind users, because this method allows reliably defining how to select and order the menu items in an intuitive and friendly way that is specific for this type of users.     

Supporting usability through software architecture

Software engineers should consider usability as a quality attribute in their architectural a designs. Usability determines how effectively and comfortably an end-user can achieve the goals that gave rise to an interactive system. It is an important attribute to consider during all phases of software design, but especially during architectural design because of the expense involved in adding usability aspects after users have tested the system. Since the 1980s, ongoing work on supporting usability through software architectural constructs has focused on the iterative design process for the user interface, which involves initial design, user testing, re-design to correct detected flaws, re-testing, and so on. The traditional software architectural response to repeated and expected modifications to the user interface is to use separation, encapsulation and information hiding to localize the user interface     

The development of a theoretical framework and design tool for process usability assessment

The purpose of usability engineering is to facilitate the deployment of new products by decreasing development costs and improving the quality of systems. This paper will discuss the development and delivery of a unique, theoretically based software tool that provides engineers and designers with easy access to the most recent advances in human-machine interface design. This research combines several theoretical views of the interaction process into a hybrid model. Based on this model, a software tool was produced that allows engineers to model the human interaction process within their design. The system then provides feedback on the interaction process through items such as: the amount of mental effort required by a user, the degree to which the system conforms to human capabilities, the expected time to complete the interaction, where potential human error may occur, as well as potential misunderstandings or points of confusion to the users. The designer may then use this information to improve the design of the system. Validation of this technique indicates that the hybrid model produces accurate predictions of usability attributes and that the technique transfers from the laboratory to the real world.     

基于用户空间位置评分云模型的Web服务协同过滤推荐算法

Web服务作为无形的产品,不具备真实环境下的空间地理位置坐标,针对服务推荐中无法衡量用户群体与Web服务之间的距离位置关系,造成用户相似度计算失衡,导致推荐不准确等问题,提出了基于用户空间位置评分云模型的Web服务协同过滤推荐算法.首先基于用户群体的行为数据量化Web服务的热度区域,通过空间位置量化评分描述用户对于Web服务的兴趣偏好;其次利用云模型来描述每个用户空间行为评分的整体特征,设计了云模型间相似贴近度的计算方法,基于该方法提出了一种用户差异程度系数评估算法,并作为调控系数优化了皮尔森相似度量;最后通过协同过滤找出用户感兴趣的Web服务.实验结果表明该算法使得用户行为偏好的区域划分更加精确,在推荐准确率上明显提高,为基于位置的Web服务推荐提供新颖的方案.