This paper studies how users perceive their own performance in two alternative user interfaces. We extend methodology from psychophysics to the study of interactive performance and conduct two experiments in order to create a model of users' perception of their own performance. In our studies, two interfaces are sequentially used in a pointing task, and users are asked to rate in which interface their performance was higher. We first differentiate the effects of objective performance (speed and accuracy) versus interface qualities (distance between elements and width of elements) on perceived performance. We then derive a model that predicts the amount of change required in an interface for users to reliably detect a difference. The model is useful as a heuristic for predicting if a new interface design is better enough for users to reliably appreciate the obtained gain in user performance. We validate the model via a separate user study, and conclude by discussing how to apply our findings to design problems.

Operator inattention is an important and unsolved problem in mission critical multi-display systems where a single or a group of operators continuously monitor information flows on distributed displays. In this paper we present a novel system solution to this problem and a middleware for supporting flexible attention-aware applications for a variety of domains. Some of the most significant functionality includes direct querying of the application's attention state, custom callback definitions to be executed on specific attention events or application updates, inter-application message routing, and pushing custom notification with relative location information to any other registered application. We evaluate our middleware by developing three applications that both demonstrate the efficacy and versatility of the system and provide performance estimates in terms of latency as a function of payload size. Index Terms-inattention management, human-in-the-loop, multi-display, middleware

We present a conceptual design of an inattention management middleware with adaptive target saliency. The design objective is to provide mechanisms for managing operator inattention in multi-display multitasking applications. The conceptual design integrates ideas from situational awareness into its mechanisms to provide dynamic target saliency as a means to 1) guide operators through sub-tasks by drawing attention to high priority targets; and 2) guide operators on how to efficiently split their attention between tasks. We motivate the design by analysis of the results following a formative study with a prototype version of the conceptual design.

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