A novel mobile device user interface with integrated social networking services

Modern mobile devices support accessing Web-based social networking services from the user interface (UI) of Web browsers, applications, and mobile widgets. While effectively accessing these services, people may find it tedious to switch between multiple user interfaces in order to be aware of the latest content. Aiming for an improved user experience, we experimented with integration of these services into mobile devices' main user interface. The integrated content is presented beyond application silos and automatically filtered to highlight the relevant elements. A mobile system called LinkedUI was developed and deployed in one lab test and one field study. Three findings emerge from these studies. Firstly, it is feasible to construct an alternative device UI that supports integration of Web content across applications and services via hyperlinking. Time, publisher (e.g., contacts), content types, and geographical locations are key dimensions for association of content. Secondly, the alternative device UI enables better usability of accessing social networking services than accessing them from individual Web sites on mobile devices. It helps people to be aware of the latest content during microbreaks. Thirdly, automatic filtering, on the basis of one user's data, is one promising approach to identifying relevant content. Given filtered content, most people using the automatic filtering approved the functionality and experienced a better sense of control that is arguably due to the reduced information volume.     

Factors affecting the perceived usability of the mobile web portal services: comparing simplicity with consistency

Korean IT industry has noticed innovative changes emerging along with the increased popularity of smartphones. Increase of smartphone user has extended the smartphone business arena from simple and personal applications and content to professional software for the purpose of working in- and out of the office. In this regard, developing their services to be mobile-friendly would be important business strategies for Web business companies. The mobile data traffic in Korea had been 11.2 times increased from January 2010 to January 2011 and the average traffic per user in Korea is much higher than other countries. Usage of smartphones also has been steadily increased with the diffusion of smartphones. This may indicate that the dependency level on mobile portal service in Korea would be higher and more important than in other countries. This study analyzes the influences of UI simplicity and UI consistency on user perceptions of mobile portal services using PLS methodology. Simplicity shows a greater effect on usability and credibility than does consistency although consistency also shows a significant effect. In this regard, developing mobile Web services to be simple by following the selection and concentration strategy can be an effective strategic approach. Credibility shows a greater and direct effect on user satisfaction in this study than simplicity. But it does not mean that the perceived credibility should be treated simply as more important to user satisfaction than usability. Credibility of mobile Web services would be concreted more when the perceived usability would be developed with proper UI simplicity and consistency following the suggestion of Mann and Sahni. Also satisfaction significantly turns out to mediate the effect of credibility on loyalty. This study contributes as an earlier study on how and what the mobile Web service providers should design and provide their services.     

Usability risk level evaluation for physical user interface of mobile phone

The mobile phone has become an indispensable device in everyday life. However, many usability problems were generated by the multi-functionality of mobile phones. There was an important increase on the user interface (UI) design and usability. With the introduction of a variety of forms and keypads in mobile phones, the user's need of controllability, grip-stability, and usability were raised in the UI aspect. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the physical user interface (PUI) elements of mobile phones, and defined the degree of usability risk such as key level value, function level value, and grip level value. Also, this study proposed an evaluation framework to quantitatively measure the usability risk in the mobile phone PUI elements. For this, the mobile phone PUI elements were analyzed and classified by key type, function, and form-factor. Hence, in the case study was investigated and evaluated 133 mobile phones in the market by the proposed framework. As a result, the proposed evaluation framework enabled the measurement of the mobile phone usability risk level in the early stages of the concept design. This made possible the prediction of design problems related with the mobile phone PUI.     

A Usability Checklist for the Usability Evaluation of Mobile Phone User Interface

In the last decade, the research of the usability of mobile phones has been a newly evolving area with few established methodologies and realistic practices that ensure capturing usability in evaluation. Thus, there exists growing demand to explore appropriate evaluation methodologies that evaluate the usability of mobile phones quickly as well as comprehensively. This study aims to develop a task-based usability checklist based on heuristic evaluations in views of mobile phone user interface (UI) practitioners. A hierarchical structure of UI design elements and usability principles related to mobile phones were developed and then utilized to develop the checklist. To demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the proposed checklist, comparative experiments were conducted on the usability checklist and usability testing. The majority of usability problems found by usability testing and additional problems were discovered by the proposed checklist. It is expected that the usability checklist proposed in this study could be used quickly and efficiently by usability practitioners to evaluate the mobile phone UI in the middle of the mobile phone development process.     

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.     

Framework and authoring tool for an extension of the UIML language

This paper presents a framework for the design of User Interfaces (UIs). By applying model transformations, the framework allows different UIs to be generated for different computing platforms. The tool presented in this work helps designers to build an abstract user interface which is later transformed into a concrete user interface by means of transformation techniques based on graph grammars. These techniques can be used to generate implementation code for several UI platforms including desktop applications, dynamic websites and mobile applications. The generated user interfaces are integrated with a multi-tier application by referencing external services and communicating with the application core over Web Service protocols. Our tool also allows the concrete interfaces to be enhanced before generating the final UI. The approach uses an adaptation of UIML (User Interface Markup Language). The adaptation focuses on defining a data model and a services model, and it also introduces a navigation model that allows data communication from one UI to another. The obtained UIs together with Web Services can conform complete applications instead of just being prototypes.     

Design of Mobile Phones for Older Adults: An Empirical Analysis of Design Guidelines and Checklists for Feature Phones and Smartphones

Design guidelines and checklists are suggested as a useful tool in the development and evaluation of interface design of mobile phones for older adults. Given the intense evolution of mobile phone design, understanding how the design guidelines and checklists have taken into account the advances in mobile phone usability for older adults is important for their correct application and future development. Thus, this study explores the usability dimensions of mobile phone design for older adults and the related changes in terms of time and the type of device (feature phones vs. smartphones) based on an expert coding of the eight mobile phone design guidelines and checklists for older adults published between 2006 and 2014. The results of the expert coding show that design guidelines and checklists most frequently deal with visual and haptic issues (e.g., high contrast, button type, and button size), whilst they hardly ever address various elements of textual interface (e.g., ease of text entry, a button’s feedback, and font type). Over time, the design guidelines and checklists have become more complex in terms of the average number of included usability categories and dimensions. For smartphones, the guidelines, on average, put more emphasis on the screen, touchscreen, text, and exterior related issues, whereas the design guidelines for feature phones stress the usability of the keypad and menus. Besides revealing potential usability dimensions that could be further expanded in the guidelines, this study also highlights the need for research that would empirically validate the design guidelines and checklists in the future.     

Usability Principles for Augmented Reality Applications in a Smartphone Environment

Through the rapid spread of smartphones, users have access to many types of applications similar to those on desktop computer systems. Smartphone applications using augmented reality (AR) technology make use of users' location information. As AR applications will require new evaluation methods, improved usability and user convenience should be developed. The purpose of the current study is to develop usability principles for the development and evaluation of smartphone applications using AR technology. We develop usability principles for smartphone AR applications by analyzing existing research about heuristic evaluation methods, design principles for AR systems, guidelines for handheld mobile device interfaces, and usability principles for the tangible user interface. We conducted a heuristic evaluation for three popularly used smartphone AR applications to identify usability problems. We suggested new design guidelines to solve the identified problems. Then, we developed an improved AR application prototype of an Android-based smartphone, which later was conducted a usability testing to validate the effects of usability principles.     

一种新的笔式交互范式的可用性评估

笔式用户界面是Post—WIMP界面的一种重要形态,具有自然、和谐的交互特性。尽管笔式用户界面广泛应用于无处不在计算环境中,但很少专门对它的可用性进行评估。针对笔式用户界面的特征,提出了一种新的笔式用户界面范式,基于此范式设计并实现了一个面向教学的笔式交互系统(PenOffice),利用此系统对范式从易学性、效率、出错率和用户满意度这几个方面进行了可用性评估,从中分析了笔式用户界面以及这种新的界面范式的优点和不足。     

A Return on Investment Assessment Model for a Mobile User Interface Project at the Predevelopment Stage

We present a new approach for assessing the business performance of a mobile user interface (UI) project at its predevelopment stage. Traditionally, the performance measurement of a mobile UI is made from the perspective of usability. Yet, as the number of mobile phone users is rapidly increasing, and, given that stakeholders are beginning to realize the importance of the UI, there is a growing demand to measure its business performance quantitatively as well as qualitatively. This article presents a model that can facilitate Return on Investment (ROI) estimations pertaining to the development of a mobile UI before the service with the new UI is launched. We base our method on stated preference data for the purpose of applying a conjoint analysis. Subsequently, we evaluate the viability of the proposed model quantitatively by comparing the estimated ROI at the predevelopment stage with the actual sales revenue achieved after the launch of the service. The proposed model was successfully applied to real‐world mobile UI design projects at Korea Telecom. Its benefits are demonstrated here through a case study. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

DaaS: Cloud-based mobile Web service discovery

The proliferation of smartphones and the recent advancement in ubiquitous wireless access have made mobile Web services more possible than ever before. However, finding relevant Web services that can match requests and fit user context remains a major concern. The challenges facing Web service discovery are further magnified by the stringent constraints of mobile devices and the inherit complexity of wireless heterogeneous networks. Cloud computing, with its flexible design and theoretically unlimited computing resources, is a viable approach to bootstrapping Web service discovery. The cloud can build bridges between mobile devices, as a convenient ubiquitous interface, and a backbone infrastructure with abundant computing resources. This paper introduces “Discovery as a service (Daas)”, a novel cloud-based discovery framework that addresses the core components of mobile Web service discovery. The DaaS framework lays the foundation of efficient mobile Web service discovery that takes into consideration user preferences and context. The experimental validation and performance evaluation demonstrate that DaaS can effectively rank relevant services according to the various user context and preferences, in addition to enhancing the precision of the discovered services. The prototype also shows that Web service clustering for discovery significantly improves the overall response time, while the cloud maintains scalability according to prespecified performance criteria.     

A Meta-Model for Model-Driven Web Development

Several model-driven development (MDD) techniques for web applications exist; these techniques use meta-models for defining transformations and designing models. In this paper, we propose a meta-model for abstract web applications that can be mapped to multiple platforms. We extend a UML-based model to support specific features of the Web and Web 2.0 as well as to establish a bridge to functional and usability requirements through use cases and user interface (UI) prototypes. The meta-model also helps avoid a common MDD-related problem caused by name-based dependencies. Finally, mappings to a number of specific web platforms are presented in order to validate the appropriateness of the meta-model as an abstract web model.     

Leveraging Microsoft׳s mobile usability guidelines: Conceptualizing and developing scales for mobile application usability

This research conceptualizes mobile application usability and develops and validates an instrument to measure the same. Mobile application usability has attracted widespread attention in the field of human–computer interaction because well-designed applications can enhance user experiences. To conceptualize mobile application usability, we analyzed Microsoft’s mobile usability guidelines and defined 10 constructs representing mobile application usability. Next, we conducted a pilot study followed by a quantitative assessment of the content validity of the scales. We then sequentially applied exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to two samples (n=404; n=501) consisting of German consumers using mobile social media applications on their smartphones. To evaluate the confirmatory factor model, we followed a step-by-step process assessing unidimensionality, discriminant validity and reliability. To assess the nomological validity of our instrument, we examined the impact of mobile application usability on two outcomes: continued intention to use and brand loyalty. The results confirmed that mobile application usability was a good predictor of both outcomes. The constructs and scales associated with mobile application usability validated in this paper can be used to guide future research in human–computer interaction and aid in the effective design of mobile applications.     

基于MVC模式的Web用户界面建模

分析了企业信息系统的Web用户界面开发特性,研究了当前主流前端框架的MVC(模型-视图-控制器)设计模式应用,针对Web前端开发需求及最佳实践方法,提出了一种符合MVC用户界面开发最佳实践的组件化Web用户界面建模方法.设计一套抽象和描述Web用户界面组件的UML(统一建模语言)概要文件,从界面数据模型、界面组件模型到界面交互模型等3个方面完成Web用户界面建模.以一个装修行业定制型ERP(企业资源计划)系统为例,通过用户界面建模实践,验证了本建模方法的可行性、易用性和有效性.     

Content and Web services converge: a unified user interface

The smart phone is thus a new class of computing device, correspondingly demanding a new class of user interface. The smart phone is truly personal t's carried by just one individual and at all times. However, we need to personalize it not only for the individual user but also for the wireless operator delivering a custom bundle of wireless services. The new UI must be easy to customize, update, and maintain. We propose a new UI solution in which the Web browser broadens its role beyond browsing external content to also function as the handset UI. Seen in context, this is only the next step in the continuing evolution of today's wireless ecosystem. Here we describe trends in mobile Web browsing that culminate in the browser as the handset UI.     

多平台移动用户界面生成方法的研究

针对多平台移动用户界面开发的各种问题,提出一个模式驱动的多平台移动用户界面生成方法（Pattern-Driven Multi-Platform development of mobile user interface）,以下简称PDMP,来加快目前多个平台的用户界面开发流程的开发效率。使用PDMP,开发者可使用高等抽象层次的开发语言来进行界面开发并以此减少劳动力成本,并使用多平台或跨平台（Android & iOS）的转换技术来为每个平台自动生成纯粹的原生用户界面。提出一个虚拟平台的概念,开发者可以在虚拟平台上构建抽象用户界面并依据转换规则转换到相应的具体平台。     

A factor combination approach to developing style guides for mobile phone user interface

This paper proposes a systematic approach to developing comprehensive guidelines for mobile phone user interface, and presents a case study to validate the approach. The approach applies a systematic combination of three critical factors: general usability principles, UI components and guideline properties to developing guidelines. In the case study, this factor combination approach was very effective in collecting experts’ ideas, creating guidelines and editing them. The resulting style guide can provide comprehensive and useful guidelines for designing mobile phone UI.

Relevance to Industry

UI designers can use the results of the study as a practical method to develop style guides for mobile phone UIs. The approach taken in the study will also be helpful in managing complex guideline information systematically.     

Designing Motion Gesture Interfaces in Mobile Phones for Blind People

Despite the existence of advanced functions in smartphones, most blind people are still using old-fashioned phones with familiar layouts and dependence on tactile buttons. Smartphones support accessibility features including vibration, speech and sound feedback, and screen readers. However, these features are only intended to provide feedback to user commands or input. It is still a challenge for blind people to discover functions on the screen and to input the commands. Although voice commands are supported in smartphones, these commands are difficult for a system to recognize in noisy environments. At the same time, smartphones are integrated with sophisticated motion sensors, and motion gestures with device tilt have been gaining attention for eyes-free input. We believe that these motion gesture interactions offer more efficient access to smartphone functions for blind people. However, most blind people are not smartphone users and they are aware of neither the affordances available in smartphones nor the potential for interaction through motion gestures. To investigate the most usable gestures for blind people, we conducted a user-defined study with 13 blind participants. Using the gesture set and design heuristics from the user study, we implemented motion gesture based interfaces with speech and vibration feedback for browsing phone books and making a call. We then conducted a second study to investigate the usability of the motion gesture interface and user experiences using the system. The findings indicated that motion gesture interfaces are more efficient than traditional button interfaces. Through the study results, we provided implications for designing smartphone interfaces.     

Advance human–machine interface automatic evaluation

The need for accessibility evaluation tools is motivated by several endogenous and exogenous reasons coming from the end user (the designer and the developer) and companies releasing information systems. Existing evaluation tools mainly concentrate on examining the code of Web pages: Web pages more and more frequently contain non-HTML parts that entirely escape from being treated by existing techniques. This is the case of the advanced human–machine interface (AHMI), a piece of software programmed in C/C++, used for controlling the advanced flight management system in the aircraft cockpit. Studying this new user interface (UI) requires a structured approach to evaluate and validate AHMI designs. The goal in this work is to develop an evaluation tool to automate the process of evaluating the AHMI. The method addresses: support of multiple bases of guidelines (accessibility or usability or both) on-demand (partial or total evaluation), with different levels of details (a presentation for developers and for those responsible for certifying accessibility). The method goes a step toward the automatic evaluation of UI containing non-HTML parts.     

Design patterns for user interface for mobile applications

The topic of this paper is a collection of user interface (UI) design patterns for mobile applications. In the paper we present the structure of the patterns collection – the patterns are suggested solutions to problems that are grouped into a set of problem areas that are further grouped into three main problem areas – a structure which is valuable both as an index to identifying patterns to use, and it gives a fairly comprehensive overview of issues when designing user interfaces for mobile applications. To show the breadth of the patterns collection we present six individual problems with connected design patterns in some detail – each coming from different problem areas. They represent important and relevant problems, and are on different levels of abstraction, thus showing how patterns may be used to present problems and solutions on different levels of detail. To show the relevance and usefulness of the patterns collection for usability professionals with a mixed background, we present some relevant findings from a validation of the patterns collection. In addition to verifying the relevance and usefulness of the patterns collection, it also shows both expected and surprising correlations between background and perceived relevance and usefulness. One important finding from the validation is an indication that the patterns collection is best suited for experienced UI developers wanting to start developing mobile UIs. Using a patterns collection for documenting design knowledge and experience has been a mixed experience, so we discuss pros and cons of this. Finally, we present related work and future research.