Automatically generating personalized user interfaces with Supple

Abstract

Today's computer-human interfaces are typically designed with the assumption that they are going to be used by an able-bodied person, who is using a typical set of input and output devices, who has typical perceptual and cognitive abilities, and who is sitting in a stable, warm environment. Any deviation from these assumptions may drastically hamper the person's effectiveness-not because of any inherent barrier to interaction, but because of a mismatch between the person's effective abilities and the assumptions underlying the interface design. We argue that automatic personalized interface generation is a feasible and scalable solution to this challenge. We present our Supple system, which can automatically generate interfaces adapted to a person's devices, tasks, preferences, and abilities. In this paper we formally define interface generation as an optimization problem and demonstrate that, despite a large solution space (of up to 10 17 possible interfaces), the problem is computationally feasible. In fact, for a particular class of cost functions, Supple produces exact solutions in under a second for most cases, and in a little over a minute in the worst case encountered, thus enabling run-time generation of user interfaces. We further show how several different design criteria can be expressed in the cost function, enabling different kinds of personalization. We also demonstrate how this approach enables extensive user-and system-initiated run-time adaptations to the interfaces after they have been generated. Supple is not intended to replace human user interface designers-instead, it offers alternative user interfaces for those people whose devices, tasks, preferences, and abilities are not sufficiently addressed by the hand-crafted designs. Indeed, the results of our study show that, compared to manufacturers' defaults, interfaces automatically generated by Supple significantly improve speed, accuracy and satisfaction of people with motor impairments.

Methods for Efficient Development of Task-Based Applications

“…Project SUPPLE [6] currently enables to automatically generate user interfaces. It is possible to provide SUPPLE with data that are required to be entered by a user (specifying the type of data, name, allowed and expected values) and SUPPLE provides a user interface optimized for a specific user [7] enabling the user to enter the required data.…”

Action graphs and user performance analysis

“…(Buttons could be made smaller to increase times, but the argument does not depend on the scale of the grid -and even with small buttons, one eventually runs out of physical space.) On a graphical user interface, and some devices with dynamic (e.g., illuminated) button labels, it is possible to have soft buttons that "recycle" space, as not all buttons need to be visible at the same time (Gajos & Weld, 2004), however this does not change the geometric trade-off -it just increases the number of buttons.…”

Adaptive Mouse-Replacement Interface Control Functions for Users with Disabilities

“…As a result the mouse cursor moves in a diagonal direction. 5 In two initial experiments, we recorded the mouse trajectories of an adult subject with cerebral palsy using the Camera Mouse. In the first experiment, circular targets appeared on the screen and the user was asked to move the mouse pointer to the highlighted target.…”

“…One way to address the problem of varying user movement abilities is to design adaptive user interfaces [5,7]. Such interfaces can change their configuration to better suit the individual user.…”