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Although multi-touch applications and user interfaces have become increasingly common in the last few years, there is no agreed-upon multi-touch user interface language yet. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the design of multi-touch user interfaces, this paper presents semiotic analysis of multi-touch applications as an interesting approach to gain deeper understanding of the way users use and understand multi-touch interfaces. In a case study example, user tests of a multi-touch tabletop application platform called MuTable are analysed with the Communicability Evaluation Method to evaluate to what extent users understand the intended messages (e.g., cues about interaction and functionality) the MuTable platform communicates. The semiotic analysis of this case study shows that although multi-touch interfaces can facilitate user exploration, the lack of well-known standards in multi-touch interface design and in the use of gestures makes the user interface difficult to use and interpret. This conclusion points to the importance of the elusive balance between letting users explore multi-touch systems on their own on one hand, and guiding users, explaining how to use and interpret the user interface, on the other. ispartof: International Journal of Human-computer Studies vol:70 issue:10 pages:714-728 status: published

In recent years, an increasing number of Mixed Reality (MR) applications have been developed using agent technology—both for the underlying software and as an interface metaphor. However, no unifying field or theory currently exists that can act as a common frame of reference for these varied works. As a result, much duplication of research is evidenced in the literature. This paper seeks to fill this important gap by outlining ‘‘for the first time’’ a formal field of research that has hitherto gone unacknowledged, namely the field of Mixed Reality Agents (MiRAs), which are defined as agents embodied in a Mixed Reality environment. Based on this definition, a taxonomy is offered that classifies MiRAs along three axes: agency, based on the weak and strong notions outlined by Wooldridge and Jennings (1995); corporeal presence, which describes the degree of virtual or physical representation (body) of a MiRA; and interactive capacity, which characterises its ability to sense and act on the virtual and physical environment. Furthermore, this paper offers the first comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art of MiRA research and places each project within the proposed taxonomy. Finally, common trends and future directions for MiRA research are discussed. By defining Mixed Reality Agents as a formal field, establishing a common taxonomy, and retrospectively placing existing MiRA projects within it, future researchers can effectively position their research within this landscape, thereby avoiding duplication and fostering reuse and interoperability. Science Foundation Ireland au,ti,ke,SB-09/09/2011

Three different versions of a voice-operated mobile city guide service with a hierarchically structured dialogue were evaluated in a mobile setting. One numbered menu style (standard) service, and two services which contained terms derived from underlying real-world referents, were implemented. The real-world referents (metaphors) used were: an office filing system and a computer desktop. It was hypothesized that the use of interface metaphors would allow more participants to visualize the service structure, leading to an improvement in performance relative to the standard service. Forty-two phone users undertook three different tasks with one of the three phone services. User performance and attitudes to the services were recorded, and post-task interviews were conducted. Results showed that significantly more participants using the metaphor-based services visualized the services. Visualizers performed significantly better than non-visualizers, with visualization emerging as a significant predictor of both attitude and performance. We argue that designing speech-based mobile phone services using an appropriate spatial metaphor leads to high levels of visualisation, which allows participants to orient themselves and to navigate more effectively within the hierarchical service architecture. The usability benefits afforded by visualization may become especially important when using phone services in cognitively demanding mobile settings.

Interface agents are computer programs that provide personalized assistance to users with their computer-based tasks. Most interface agents achieve personalization by learning a user's preferences in a given application domain and assisting him according to them. In this work we adopt a different approach to personalization: how to personalize the interaction between interface agents and users in a mixed-initiative interaction context. We have empirically studied a set of interaction issues that agents have to take into account to achieve this goal and we present our results in this article. Some of these personalization issues are: discovering the type of assistant a user wants, learning when (and if) to interrupt the user, discovering how the user wants to be assisted in different contexts. As a result of our experiments, we have defined the components of a user interaction profile that models a user's interaction and assistance preferences. This profile will enable interface agents to enhance and personalize their interaction with users by discovering how to provide each user assistance of the right sort at the right time.

In this paper we describe some results of the Alice project. Alice is an ontology-based e-commerce project which aims to support online users in the task of shopping. Ontologies describing customers, products, typical shopping tasks and the external context form the basis for the Alice architecture. We also build upon two novel interface metaphors originally developed for navigating databases: the Guides metaphor and Dynamic Queries. The Guides metaphor was developed at Apple to reduce the cognitive load on learners navigating a large hypermedia database. Within Alice we use the Guides metaphor to allow online shoppers to interact with the system in a variety of ways. In effect, by choosing these options they are classifying themselves for the purpose of customizing system responses. We discuss the link between Alice Guides and Kozinets' notion of e-tribes or Virtual Communities of Consumption. Our second interface metaphor Dynamic Queries (coupled with Starfield displays) allows users to very quickly find relevant items by displaying the results of queries, posed via specialized slider widgets, within 100 ms, We have constructed a tool, Quiver, which constructs Dynamic Query interfaces on-the-fly as the result of queries to knowledge models stored on the Alice server.

Since the 1980s metaphors have been used to design computer interfaces in order to facilitate user learning. As computer systems become more complex, the issue of using a large number of metaphors of narrow scope to design interfaces has arisen. Several researchers have proposed the use of multiple metaphors in the design of computer systems. This study set out to compare the effects of structural cues derived from single versus multiple metaphors used in designing hypertext systems. A total of 54 undergraduate students were asked to perform selected information search tasks. The results show that the provision of metaphorical cues helped subjects to find a greater number of accurate answers in a shorter period of time. The more complete mapping between the base and target domains in the design of the interface, along with cues from multiple metaphors, may have helped subjects to develop more sophisticated representations of the hypertext structure.

User interfaces often only support one way to do a task when the physical interface or the requirements of the task would permit other ways. In contrast, a user interface that supports multiple approaches is permissive. This paper argues that permissive user interfaces are easier to use?and even when they are not applicable for particular applications, considering permissiveness is a productive design heuristic.Many user interfaces are difficult to use yet very easily demonstrated or explained by experts?with the results that users become frustrated because hindsight makes usability problems look like the user's own fault. The lack of permissiveness in such user interfaces explains this paradox.

User interface modelling (UIM) is basically a method for gathering user requirements that are applicable when designing the user interface to an information system. UIM is to be used as a complement to use case modelling (Jacobson, Christerson, Jonsson & Overgaard, 1992) in the system development process. An actor model, a goal model and a work model are specified during sessions where the end-users cooperate with software engineers and user-interface designers. The actor model is a description of characteristics for each category of users. The goal model is a list of high-level goals the users want to achieve. The work model is a specification of work situations, information objects and actions, and properties of attributes and operations, suitable for the design. UIM does not describe a step-by-step procedure on how to create usable interfaces. Interface design is partially a creative process than cannot be completely described with a method. However, the design process can be facilitated if the design decisions are based on a substantial model defining the users' requirements for the user interface. This model is created during UIM sessions.The method has been tested in different development projects at the Swedish National Tax Board. It has been shown to provide useful input to the user-interface design process.

The objective of this study was to compare empirically the effect on performance and satisfaction of a menu and a front-end voice interface to a commonly used spreadsheet software package. In this study, the type of human-computer interface used (standard keyboard/mouse use of menus or keyboard/mouse with a voice front-end) is expected to influence user performance (task completion time and error rates) and satisfaction. The user's novice/expert classification is expected to interact with these two types of interfaces to influence the efficiency of the user's performance. The results suggest that there are significant relationships between task performance and level of expertise/type of interface and between user attitudes and type of interface. In general, the front-end voice interface users performed worse and had less favorable attitudes towards the software tool than the menu interface users.

The concept of ease of use has evolved over the last 30 years, keeping pace with developments in user interface technology, in the manner of Carroll's task-artifact cycle. This paper argues that recent developments in knowledge engineering require yet further changes in the concept and discusses what implications they might have for user interface design. The development in question is that construction of knowledge bases is, in many cases, no longer a matter of assembling pieces of knowledge that have been made available by knowledge acquisition, but takes on the nature of creative design which results in the generation of new knowledge at the user interface. A key difference is that while knowledge base assembly can be seen as a series of discrete events, creative design is more of a continuous process in which the user's flow of thinking must not be interrupted. This means that traditional WIMP and GUI interfaces are no longer appropriate and a more “proximal” form must be found.

This study examines the impact of a user's level of computer knowledge and an adaptive software interface on performance. Performance is examined with a simulation game decision-making task and with the user's expertise on the type of computer interface used to accomplish the task. MIS literature offers various interface characteristics for novice users that are different from those recommended for experienced users. The premise of this research is that the characteristics of the computer user will change based on exposure to the experience with the application at hand. When such change transpires, the characteristics of the interface can be software-adjusted to maximize the productivity of the user. This empirical study investigates the impact of using an adaptive user interface that evolves to correspond to the skill level of the user. Results indicate that the level of computer knowledge, when using an adaptive interface, is not significant on either task performance or interface learning. More importantly, however, the type of interface coupled to a particular user?novice, adaptive, or experienced?produces significant performance differences.