Ephemeral adaptation: the use of gradual onset to improve menu selection performance

ABSTRACT

We introduce ephemeral adaptation, a new adaptive GUI technique that improves performance by reducing visual search time while maintaining spatial consistency. Ephemeral adaptive interfaces employ gradual onset to draw the user's attention to predicted items: adaptively predicted items appear abruptly when the menu is opened, but non-predicted items fade in gradually. To demonstrate the benefit of ephemeral adaptation we conducted two experiments with a total of 48 users to show: (1) that ephemeral adaptive menus are faster than static menus when accuracy is high, and are not significantly slower when it is low and (2) that ephemeral adaptive menus are also faster than adaptive highlighting. While we focused on user-adaptive GUIs, ephemeral adaptation should be applicable to a broad range of visually complex tasks.

REFERENCES

• 1: Breitmeyer, B. and Julesz, B. The role of on and off transients in determining the psychophysical spatial frequency response. Vision Research 15, (1974), 411--415.
• 2: Andy Cockburn , Carl Gutwin , Saul Greenberg, A predictive model of menu performance, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 28-May 03, 2007, San Jose, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1240624.1240723]
• 3: Cohen, J. Eta-squared and partial eta-squared in communication science. Human Communication Research 28, (1973), 473--490.
• 4: Leah Findlater , Joanna McGrenere, A comparison of static, adaptive, and adaptable menus, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.89-96, April 24-29, 2004, Vienna, Austria [doi>10.1145/985692.985704]
• 5: Leah Findlater , Joanna McGrenere, Impact of screen size on performance, awareness, and user satisfaction with adaptive graphical user interfaces, Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2008, Florence, Italy [doi>10.1145/1357054.1357249]
• 6: Folk, C.L., Remington, R.W., and Johnston, J.C. Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 18, 4(1992), 1030--1044.
• 7: Gajos, K., Christianson, D., Hoffmann, R., Shaked, R., Henning, K., Long, J.J., and Weld, D.S. Fast And Robust Interface Generation for Ubiquitous Applications. In Proc. UBICOMP'05, (2005), 37--55.
• 8: Krzysztof Z. Gajos , Mary Czerwinski , Desney S. Tan , Daniel S. Weld, Exploring the design space for adaptive graphical user interfaces, Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces, May 23-26, 2006, Venezia, Italy [doi>10.1145/1133265.1133306]
• 9: Krzysztof Z. Gajos , Katherine Everitt , Desney S. Tan , Mary Czerwinski , Daniel S. Weld, Predictability and accuracy in adaptive user interfaces, Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2008, Florence, Italy [doi>10.1145/1357054.1357252]
• 10: Greenberg, S. and Witten, I. Adaptive personalized interfaces: A question of viability. Behaviour and Information Technology 4, 1(1985), 31--45.
• 11: Jonides, J. and Yantis, S. Uniqueness of abrupt onset in capturing attention. Perception and Psychophysics 43, 4(1988), 346--354.
• 12: J. Mitchell , B. Shneiderman, Dynamic versus static menus: an exploratory comparison, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, v.20 n.4, p.33-37, April 1989 [doi>10.1145/67243.67247]
• 13: McCormick, P.A. Orienting attention without awareness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 23, 1(1997), 168--180.
• 14: Andrew Sears , Ben Shneiderman, Split menus: effectively using selection frequency to organize menus, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.1 n.1, p.27-51, March 1994 [doi>10.1145/174630.174632]
• 15: Theeuwes, J. Exogenous and endogenous control of attention: The effect of visual onsets and offsets. Perception and Psychophysics 49, 1(1991), 83--90.
• 16: Theeuwes, J. Stimulus-driven capture and attentional set: Selective search for color and visual abrupt onsets. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 20, 4(1994), 799--806.
• 17: Tolhurst, D.J. Reaction times in the detection of gratings by human observers: A probabilistic mechanism. Vision Research 15, (1974), 1143--1149.
• 18: Theophanis Tsandilas , m. c. schraefel, An empirical assessment of adaptation techniques, CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, OR, USA [doi>10.1145/1056808.1057079]
• 19: Theophanis Tsandilas , m. c. schraefel, Bubbling menus: a selective mechanism for accessing hierarchical drop-down menus, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 28-May 03, 2007, San Jose, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1240624.1240806]
• 20: Yantis, S. and Jonides, J. Abrupt visual onset and selective attention: Evidence from visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 10, 5(1984), 601--621.
• 21: Yantis, S. and Jonides, J. Abrupt visual onsets and selective attention: Voluntary versus automatic allocation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 16, 1(1990), 121--134.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Interaction styles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, direct manipulation)

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
abrupt visual onset, adaptive interfaces, interaction techniques, menu design, personalization, user study