Melanie Hartmann

Context-Aware Form Filling for Web Applications

Context-aware user interfaces facilitate the user interaction by suggesting or prefilling data derived from the users current context. This raises the problem of determining which context information can be used as input for which interaction element in the user interface. This task is especially challenging as the texts that describe the elements, e.g. their labels, often differ in the terminology used. In this paper, we present a novel mapping process for that purpose which (i) combines the advantages of string-based and semantic similarity measures to bridge the vocabulary gap between context and UI\ element, and which (ii) is able to automatically extend its vocabulary by observing the users interactions. We show that these two features dramatically increase the quality of the resulting mapping. Unlike previous approaches, the proposed mapping process does not require any training or manually tagged data. Further, it does not only use the label to describe the context and UI elements, but additional texts like their tooltips.

AUGUR: providing context-aware interaction support

As user interfaces become more and more complex and feature laden, usability tends to decrease. One possibility to counter this effect are intelligent support mechanisms. In this paper, we present AUGUR, a system that provides context-aware interaction support for navigating and entering data in arbitrary form-based web applications. We further report the results of an initial user study we performed to evaluate the usability of such context-aware interaction support. AUGUR combines several novel approaches: (i) it considers various context sources for providing interaction support, and (ii) it contains a context store that mimics the users short-term memory to keep track of the context information that currently influences the users interactions. AUGUR thereby combines the advantages of the three main approaches for supporting the users interactions, i.e. knowledge-based systems, learning agents, and end-user programming.

Workshop on interacting with smart objects

The number of smart objects in our everyday life is steadily increasing. In this workshop we discuss how the interaction with these smart objects should be designed from various perspectives.

Interacting with context

Context is dodgy - just as the human computer user: hard to predict, erroneous, and probabilistic in nature. Linking the two together i.e. creating context-aware user interfaces (UIs) remains a great challenge in computer science since ubiquitous computing calls for lean, situated, and focused UIs that can be operated on the move or intertwined with primary tasks grabbing the users attention. The paper reviews major categories of context that matter at the seam of humans and computers, emphasizing quality issues. Approaches to the marriage of context-awareness and user modeling are highlighted, including our own approach. Both sides of the coin are inspected: the improvement of UIs by means of quality attributed context information and, to a lesser extent, the challenge to convey context quality to the user as part of the interaction.

Proactively Adapting Interfaces to Individual Users for Mobile Devices

The amount of functionality offered by nowadays applications is constantly growing, mostly leading to more and more complex user interfaces. This often decreases their usability, especially in mobile settings where we have to deal with limited input and output capabilities. We state that adapting the interface to the available devices as well as to the users current needs is the key to improving usability. In this paper, we present the AUGUR system that can automatically generate user- and device-adapted interfaces. We thereby focus on the FxL* algorithm that determines which user interface elements are currently relevant for a user. We show that it clearly outperforms algorithms that do not take the user or her situation into account.

Web based evaluation of proactive user interfaces

Usability evaluation of new interface concepts often requires a user study to yield valid results. User studies are however a cost intensive method compared to guideline based usability evaluation. In the AUGUR project we conducted a user study to validate a new interface concept, proactive user interfaces. The method for evaluation we used consists of four steps and relies on leveraging existing tools for realizing each step. These tools can highly automate the data gathering step in the usability study and thereby lower the cost for conducting such a study. In particular they allow for remote participation via a web browser. The obtained data can be analyzed to gain insight into the relation of factors to the three subnotions of usability: efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction as defined in ISO 9241. We applied the developed method to evaluate the proactive user interfaces we develop in the AUGUR project. In the AUGUR project we aim at augmenting existing user interfaces with proactive and multimodal features to enhance the overall usability of the application. In this paper, we also present the results of the study that shows that proactive augmentations are beneficial for the usability of a user interface and serves as a case study for the application of the evaluation method.

AUGUR: Interface Adaptation for Small Screen Devices

The amount of functionality offered by nowadays applications is constantly growing, mostly leading to more and more complex user interfaces. This decreases their usability especially in settings with limited input and output capabilities like in mobile or ubiquitous computing. In these settings the interaction costs are much higher than for traditional desktop applications. Adapting the interface to the available devices as well as to the users preferences and tasks is the key to reducing interaction costs and increasing usability of applications. In this paper, we present the AUGUR system that can automatically generate user- and device-adapted interfaces. For that purpose, we developed the FxL* algorithm which is introduced in this paper. FxL* is the first algorithm that considers the individual user as well as her current situation to determine which user interface elements should be presented. We show that it clearly outperforms algorithms that do not take the users situation into account.

MundoMonkey: customizing interaction with web applications in interactive spaces

We notice an increasing usage of web applications in interactive spaces, a variant of ubiquitous computing environments. Interactive spaces feature a large and dynamically changing number of devices, e.g., an interactive TV set in the living room that is used with different input devices or an iPhone that is dynamically federated to devices in the environment. Web applications need a better way to exploit the resources in the interactive space beyond the standard input devices like mouse and keyboard, e.g., a speech recognition device. This paper presents MundoMonkey a web browser extension and programming API for interactive spaces. The API follows the event based programming paradigm for allowing web applications and end-user scripts to access the interactive space. Our approach aligns well with the commonly used programming style for web applications. We used MundoMonkey to customize the interface of web applications to user preferences and the interactive space at hand. To our knowledge our approach is the first to address adaptation of the output as well as processing of input data. With MundoMonkey the customization is performed transparently to the application developer by the end-user. Thereby, MundoMonkey is an alternative to model driven user interface development approaches.