User Interfaces and Help Systems: From Helplessness to Intelligent Assistance

Despite a large body of multidisciplinary research on helpful and user-orientedinterface design, help facilities found in most commercial software are so ill-conceived thatthey are often unhelpful. From a wide spectrum of disciplines and software tools, we presentan extensive review of related work, identifying their limitations as well as their most prom-isingaspects. Using this material, we attempt to recapitulate the necessary requirements foruseful help systems.     

Using Distributable User Interfaces in CSCL In-Situ Classrooms

Distributable user interfaces enable users to distribute user interface interaction objects (i.e. panels, buttons, input fields, checkboxes, etc.) across different displays using a set of distribution primitives to manipulate them in real time. This work presents how this kind of user interfaces facilitates the computer supported collaborative learning in modern classrooms. These classrooms provide teachers and students with display ecosystems consisting of stationary displays, such as smart projectors and smart TVs as well as mobile displays owned by teachers and students, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The distribution of user interface interaction objects enables teachers to modify the user interface interaction objects that are available to students in real time to control and promote the collaboration and participation among them during learning activities. We propose the development of this type of applications using an extension of the CAMELEON reference framework that supports the definition of UI distribution models. The Essay exercise is presented as a case of study where teachers control the collaboration among students by distributing user interface interaction objects.     

A Model Transformation Approach for Automatic Composition of COTS User Interfaces in Web-Based Information Systems

Globalization of the information and the Knowledge Society requires the modernization of Web-based Information Systems (WIS) into evolutive and adaptable user interfaces. Today, WIS user interfaces are built following traditional development paradigms. This article is inspired on a Model-Driven Development (MDD) perspective to produce runtime automatic composition of user interfaces from model and metamodel representations of widgets-type COTS interface components architectures and model transformation.     

Intelligent interaction design: the role of human-computer interaction research in the design of intelligent systems

As more intelligent systems are introduced into the marketplace, it is becoming increasingly urgent to consider usability for such systems. Historically, the two fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and human- computer interaction (HCI) have had little in common. In this paper, we consider how established HCI techniques can usefully be applied to the design and evaluation of intelligent systems, and where there is an urgent need for new approaches. Some techniques - notably those for requirements acquisition and empirical evaluation - can usefully be adopted, and indeed are, within many projects. However, many of the tools and techniques developed within HCI to support design and theory-based evaluation cannot be applied in their present forms to intelligent systems because they are based on inappropriate assumptions; there is consequently a need for new approaches. Conversely, there are approaches that have been developed within AI - e.g. in research on dialogue and on ontologies - that could usefully be adapted and encapsulated to respond to this need. These should form the core of a future research agenda for intelligent interaction design.     

Towards useful and usable interaction design tools: CanonSketch

Despite all the effort dedicated to bringing better User-Centered Design (UCD) tools to market, current studies show that the industry is still dominated by tools that do not support the activities and workstyles of designers. Also, there is a growing need for interaction design tools aimed at software engineers, a problem related to bringing usability into the software engineering processes.

We propose a new workstyle model that can be effectively used to envision, design and evaluate a new generation of innovative interaction and software design tools, aimed at integrating usability and software engineering.

We illustrate the effectiveness of our model by describing a new tool, called CanonSketch, that was built in order to support UCD in terms of the dimensions in our workstyle model. We also describe an evaluation study aimed at contrasting paper prototyping with our tool as well as the level of workstyle support.     

Incorporating Software Visualization in the Design of Intelligent Diagnosis Systems for User Programming

Program diagnosis systems were developed to help users solve programming problems. By providing guidence on errors and misconceptions, these systems can help the users in writing programs and understanding their dynamic behavior. Features of software visualization which aim at providing visual and concrete depictions to the abstractions and operations of programs have also shown to be making programs more understandable. The main theme of this paper is to asses the usefulness of incorporating features of software visualization into the design of program diagnosis systems intended for novices. We report an empirical evaluation to assess the effectiveness of supporting visualization features during problem solving. The system used in the evaluation integrates visualzation and immediacy features and supports a model-tracing based approach to program diagnosis. Unlike other similar systems, our prototype system supports a more flexible style of interaction by increasing the grain size of diagnosis to a complete programming statement. The evaluation reported here seems to suggest that when supported with visualization features, systems for program diagnosis tend to be more effective in helping the users during problem solving.