An Optimized GUI Based On Users' Abilities

Ostracus writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have recently developed a system, which, for the first time, offers an instantly customizable approach to user interfaces. Each participant in the program is placed through a brief skills test, and then a mathematically-based version of the user interface optimized for his or her vision and motor abilities is generated. The current off-the-shelf designs are especially discouraging for the disabled, the elderly and others who have trouble controlling a mouse, because most computer programs have standardized button sizes, fonts, and layouts, which are designed for typical users."

Let me help

"Ok, Sir...now, just press any key..."
"...?"
"Sir...?"
"...sorry, I can't find the 'any' key..."

Re:Let me help

As a user, I'm politely asking to stop making fun of me. It was only once that you, software designers, made us stupid with this any key thing. Do I have to remind you of your muffs, you know, things like "Keyboard not found, press F1 to continue?" I'm sure we scored more than you at this game!

Re:Let me help

That is because the F1 will not make you continue.

The interface clearly states: Would you like to delete the seleted file(s)?
The answwer below it should read:
All, No or Yes? Press A, N, Y key to continue.

And if you do not believe that, I will make something else up.

Re:Let me help

Funnily enough, I had this yesterday, only to discover THE MESSAGE IS RIGHT!

I plugged in the USB keyboard, the backlight came on, I pressed F1, and the machine booted.

Motherboard is an Abit IP 35 Pro with BIOS USB Keyboard support enabled for disbelievers who want to try it...

Re:Let me help

That's because if you don't have a keyboard, your PC is kind of useless. (not counting headless systems operated by SSL)

This error message is there to show that you can continue as soon as you plug a (USB) keyboard in. That's why it wants you to press a key, so it know that you now have a keyboard.

It really should be rewriten as "Keyboard not found. Plug one in and press F1 to continue.".

Re:Let me help

Guy goes into a Home Depot and asks what they have that he can use to cut wood. Clerk shows him a shiny new chainsaw kit - the guy buys it and takes it home after being assured that he can bring it back if he isn't happy with it.

Two weeks later the guy brings the chainsaw back to HD, saying he'd like to return it.

"I'm sorry you had trouble Sir, what seems to be the issue?"
"I worked from dawn to dusk for the last two weeks, but all I got done was half a lousy cord of wood - I'd like something that might make the job go a bit faster..."
"I see - let me check it out for you..." says the clerk as he proceeds to fire up the chainsaw...gunning the engine and spinning the sharp-toothed chain, to which the surprised customer replies rather loudly...
"What's that sound???"

Re:Reason not to buy chain saw at discount store

As to blaming customers for being stupid about user interfaces on everything from chain saws to computers, there is something to be said about proper training and for purchasing from sales outlets that provide that training.

Of course, with computers, a big part of the problem is that most of the settings, options, whatever, aren't documented anywhere that the user is likely to discover. And when something is documented, it's usually in the developers' obscure jargon that doesn't share any keywords with the description a typical user would give.

I recently stumbled across a useful example: I'd been frustrated for years that, good as firefox is, it didn't seem to have a way to do something obvious that was in all the other browsers (of the 12 on my Mac, for example) had right there in the obvious menu: I couldn't get it to open a group of bookmarks in tabs in a new window. I made all sorts of guesses, googled for it, and asked on various forums. A few people said that it was possible, but gave no clues as to how. Then suddenly, a few months ago, I mentioned it in a comment here in /., and someone answered with the key combo. It's shift-click on the menu item, in the OSX edition. Now, I used shift-click in a number of other situations, but I guess I hadn't accidentally tried it on a bookmarks group-level item. Of all the zillions of possible multi-key possibilities in the zillions of widgets I see on the screen, there was no particular reason to guess that it would do that in this widget. There's no metaphorical interpretation of the various shift-clicks that I know; they all seem to do something totally idiosyncratic when they do anything at all.

I just repeated a search through FF's Preferences stuff, and I can definitely say there's no clue there. Or if there is, it's couched it terms that make no sense to me. The "Tabs" window has only six items, and clearly none of them applies to this task. If it's hidden somewhere else, I can't spot it.

This isn't particularly a criticism of FF, of course. It's just a single recent instance of a universal problem with computer UIs: The user usually has no way of discovering most of the capabilities, other than in discussions like this, on line or via email or in person or however. Or by randomly hitting keys and trying to make sense of the responses.

This is especially frustrating, because you know that most apps have one or a small number of tables that handle the mapping of input to functions. It should be easy to present this table to the user, and let them edit it. I've seen this done in a few apps. I've written such config windows myself for several apps. But even in the few cases where this is done, it's usually nowhere near complete, so users remain ignorant of most of the hidden capabilities.

What's even more frustrating is that, as a developer, I've worked on several jobs where I was explicitly ordered not to write such an unneeded tool. "Customers aren't asking for it; don't waste your (billable) time on it." In other cases, it was written and widely used by developers during testing, but was removed as unneeded "debug" code in the deliverable.

So now, instead of such "unneeded" tools, we're reading about a much more complex config approach that doesn't educate the user, but instead enables a minimal subset that limits the user to what they understood during the initial installation. Somehow I'm not sure this is an improvement. I think I'd prefer something that tells me what is implemented, and maybe lets me configure it a bit to match any physical (or mental ;-) limitations I may have.

The real killer app...

would be a system that automatically and continuously monitors mouse movements and typing and continuously adjusts the user interface for the user's current skill level.

That way as you drink more beer the fonts get bigger and the mouse remains useable. Bonus points if eyeball movement can be detected and the screen be moved in time with the wobble.

Re:The real killer app...

Bonus points if eyeball movement can be detected and the screen be moved in time with the wobble.

That might make it difficult if you actually want to look at a different part of the screen...

Tech support

This will make tech support a lot more fun.

Re:

I'm not sure that the idea will work at all. You spent half an hour for the program to learn about your abilities. During this time, it might have correctly guessed some of the settings which will be correct for you, but still it will be far from perfect and you might need to tweak it anyway. And I'm talking about the case when you have serious disabilities, if you don't, the task of this program will be hard.

Tweaking the settings on your own will take you less time, and even if they are not perfect, your f

Re:

I use an xterm, you insensitive clod!

Re:

It should have no functional impact on tech support. It's not like someone with CP needs the start control panel to be only accessible through a right-click on the desk top.

"By contrast, a woman with muscular dystrophy who participated in the study used both hands to move a mouse. She could make very precise movements but moved the cursor very slowly and with great effort because of weak muscles. Based on her results, Supple automatically generated an interface with small buttons and a compressed layout."

Existing support for scaling the UI

I have athralgia which prevents me from using a mouse. I rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts but use a trackball as a pointing device. I often find GUI buttons are too small and easily overshot - and the worst offenders often have dialogs without any support for keyboard shortcuts. InfraActive comes to mind - they even removed keyboard shortcuts between versions 7 and 8. Button scaling in many apps breaks the layout, or doesn't even work. While this is a interesting and useful development, I don't see anything changing soon on the disability usability front. There is existing support in common OSs for making global UI changes, but most apps ignore/override these settings or just break horribly because the UI developer didn't design the interface to adapt to these sort of changes.

Re:Existing support for scaling the UI

I have athralgia which prevents me from using a mouse.

I had to google that. Have you tried using a mouse with the left hand rather than the right? I changed over when I had a lot of pain in my right hand. I know that your problem may not be RSI related its just that I find the left handed configuration to be more balanced, which reduces the stress on the right hand.

GUI hygiene

I sure wish people would stop inventing their own user interfaces. Instead just follow the conventions of your operating system. The sluggish and unfriendly custom interfaces I encounter in my day to day work makes me age two times as fast and makes me do my job four times as slow. We don't need a reinvented GUI, we need programmers that enforce just that little bit of GUI hygiene in the first place.

Re:

tsjaikdus, this isn't about you. it's about your grand pa, your disabled cousin and my sister w/ other disabilities.. who says one GUI must serve them all? Your GUItopia will never exist until the world is peopled by nothing but perfect trek-drones. Since that is unlikely to happen, we can embrace the tools that make our lives and the lives of our friends and family easier. V/R --Micke

Re:

Ditto for KDE 4. All the programs are very consistent.

Re:GUI hygiene

You are joking, right?

I'm not. Go and read them - or your target platform's equivalent - and then decide whether they give you any insight in to anything. I've no idea how well Windows follows Microsoft's own guide and I don't especially care, I hardly ever use their products. However, your Windows applications are unlikely to come out any more consistent with other Windows applications if you ignore their guidelines (which, incidentally, say that Ctrl-W should close the current tab/active object/window and that Ctrl-Q is one of a small number of keys they recommend for application-specific shortcuts because it's east to press and they haven't assigned a standard meaning). In particular it's likely to alert you to things you've missed - like phrasing or capitalising text in a way not consistent with the rest of Windows, or putting commit buttons in an unusual order, or missing out accelerator keys.

The people who write these things have spent a lot more time working on, refining and thinking about user interfaces than the typical developer, and your own interfaces will come out better if you at least consider what they have to say.

If your target platform is not Windows and you don't care about Window's standard spacings or dialogue box button order it may still be worth reading, for example, the section on layout starting on p581. This covers, amongst other things, the order in which they've found users scan the objects in a window (interactive controls first, footnotes, blocks of text and the window title last - and with a tendency to read top left to bottom right). Even better, read your own platform's guide, if it has one. Don't just assume that as an experienced user you know all of the conventions.

Luddites Unite

Quothe the fine article:

Assistive technologies are built on the assumption that it's the people who have to adapt to the technology. We tried to reverse this assumption, and make the software adapt to people.

Interesting enough, but I wonder if the day will come when GUI designers who aren't catering to special-case scenarios will offer the following options:

[x] Make no assumptions.
[x] Get out of my way.
[x] Yes I really mean it.
[x] No I don't want to try things first.

When skill, knowledge and ability are penalised, it's the non-below-average group that becomes the under-represented minority. Those falling into the maligned category range from Firefox users resisting the New and Improved, Microsoft Office ribbon haters, Gnome users who like the clean interface but still resent the near-absence of customisability or documentation, to the subset of Windows Power Shell users who have actually used a command-line before.

Partially an old had...

I already use a better input system in my software. In my system, there is no testing phase. You just use the program, and it grows and shrinks with you. It's like having the best of vi (speed) and notepad (simplicity) at the same time.

But it does not even come close to my next project. And that's why I did not release it.
Because after optimizing the input interface, I realized, that the usual graphical user interfaces are a total piece of crap. The most annoying part is that they are built like they are the biggest enemy of the keyboard. And you can basically combine all control elements (buttons, sliders, menus, labels) into one thing.

If it is ready for the world, I'll release it as open source... something like a windowing and (g)ui toolkit with the power of the pipe operator in bash... hard to describe.

I just have to finish my current game project first.

Already been done... well, mostly...

GEOS actually had a user skill level function. Not sure how aggressive it was in the later versions, but the earlier versions were quite aggressive.

The beginner mode had no file management - it just gave you an application, with a drastically simplified interface (no drop down menus,) and the program could only open one document, and I believe multitasking just didn't happen. There were giant EXIT and HELP buttons.

Intermediate mode had applications with a full user interface (but always maximized,) and you could manage a restricted subset of files.

Advanced let you do whatever you wanted, gave you full functionality, and actually had windowing, not maximized windows for everything.

Microsoft already tried this

Microsoft already tried this with sort of thing with Office 2000-2003. Remember infrequently used menu and toolbar items being hidden away? I do, and shudder. It made teaching people how to use it a total nightmare. Even using it as an expert user always felt clumsy.

Good UI is not about making a UI that learns the user - a computer will never be able to do a good job of that. Good UI is about making the app easily learnable. This is much easier than it sounds: simple tidyness and consistency get you 80% of the way toward good UI. But when you start making dynamic UI, consistency is the first thing to go out the window.

Office 2007 does this quite well (though it is themed differently to all other apps), and so it's much easier to work with than any previous versions of office.

Re:Microsoft already tried this

If anyone is interested, Microsoft had a pretty interesting presentation at MIX [msdn.com] that they posted on the web. They talk about all the usability and UI research that they did on Office 2003 that caused them to develop the ribbon for 2007, and then they spend some time talking about how they came up with the idea and worked out the details of the ribbon.

It's an interesting presentation if you work on UI design and have some time, or are curious as to why the hell they went to the ribbon.

Re:Worse design hurts typical users, too

I wonder, on a daily basis, how someone less abled than I could use some of these interfaces. Not to pick on these apps but they are on my mind.

• VLC, when it stops playing, resizes back to 1 inch by 2 inches or so. If it's maximized, and you click the exit button on the top right, there's a chance it will go away and you will click the exit button of whatever app was behind it, maximized. I trained myself to use "ALT-F-X" to quit, then they removed the "File" menu, and added a shortcut ALT-Q, so now it makes no sense among other windows apps.
• Firefox tell you when it's time to update. It has "update" on the left side, and "skip" on the bottom right, where I am used to seeing "next" or "continue" type buttons. Then when the update is finished, the "finished" button is on the bottom right, the opposite side of the dialog from the "update" button you just clicked. So I usually hit "skip" because it's in the wrong place, then when I do hit the "update" button I'm pissed off because now the next button I have to click is right where I wanted to click in the first place.
• Typing any sentence that includes a space in it can have any random effect on your computer. While you're typing, a modal dialog pops up and asks you something, with the default key set to "yes". Just typing the space key clicks the button. If you are a touch typist you might catch the dialog, but hunt-and-peck typists or anyone struggling to use a keyboard will have no idea that they just clicked something. So the alternate interface (keyboard) in this case interferes with the intended interface (mouse).
• Application Minimize/Maximize buttons are RIGHT NEXT to the "close this application immediately" button. How in the holy crap is a disabled user supposed to deal with that?
• Internet explorer especially, trying to navigate through forms, you get a "tab stop" on every link, form field, or any random collection of things ever. So on a site with extensive top navigation, sub navigation (left side) and hyperlinked help text, it can be hundreds of links you have to tab through to get to the form field. Of course there's the old "onLoad=javascript:document.formname.fieldname.focus()" but if I'm already typing because the site loads slowly, that function is going to make me overwrite something. In some cases, I have typed in a username, hit tab, then the page finishes loading and focuses back on the username while I type in the password in clear text. Opera used to use TAB for forms, and "a" key for links. Firefox lets you choose a mutually exclusive way of doing things, so as far as I can see there is no "links only" and "fields only" command available at the same time (accessibility.tabfocus [mozilla.com]). If I were disabled and trying to navigate a web page, I would probably go back to lynx, or quit using the intartubes completely.
• Especially in Windows NT-based lines, hard disk I/O is prioritized. I can't tell you how many times I switch between applications, or even just try to accomplish something in Windows while I/O is going on, and I can't even figure out what's going on. CTRL-ALT-DEL does not bring up the task manager for 30 seconds to a minute. ALT-TAB doesn't switch, or the application seems hung. Can't click on any explorer windows (and explorer is almost the entire graphical interface). But when it comes up, Task Manager reports 20% or lower CPU usage, often 95% plus is going to the system idle process. I can't cancel anything when that happens, just have to wait for your computer to do what it wants before it does what I want. This isn't particularly a user's abilities complaint, but the interface should actually interface - not be a one way read only "I'm busy doing something, come back laterface". Especially with multithreading and multiple cores!