Designing and Evaluating Supple Interfaces

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Designing and Evaluating Supple (?) Interfaces

• Alistair Sutcliffe
• Manchester Business School
• University of Manchester
• Manchester M60 1QD
• UK
• CHI07 Supple UIs Workshop

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Supple Engaging ?
Some users hated it Some adapted and loved
it once they figured out how to use it
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Assessing UI quality
Users background
Knowledge/ training Culture
Strategies
Preference Intentions Behaviour
Judgement - Decision making Process
Criteria usability content aesthetics
reputation customisation adaptation
engagement
Context task
Criticality of decision
Quick plug for Monday session 4 Empirical
studies Hartmann, Sutcliffe DeAngeli
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Supple by customisation/adaptation

• Pliant UIs allow us to customise and configure
  interaction
• - upsides- sense of ownership, better fit for
  interaction, meets user requirements
• - downsides- effort of customisation, more
  complexity
• Pliant UIs adapt to us (adaptive intelligent UIs)
• - upsides- the UI is pliant by anticipation,
  save us effort, meets our expectations
• - downsides- very difficult to get adaptive UIs
  right, cost of error, become the opposite of
  supple, obstructive Uis

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Supple by immersion and engagement

• The UI seduces us to become pliant by
• - immersion ego centric, character based
  interaction i.e. avatar presences, virtual worlds
• - by computer as social actor for engagement,
  e.g. chatterbots, limited dialogue capabilities
  but people really relate to avatars
• Engagement by surprise and curiosity
• - unexpected interaction seduces us, e.g.
  technological and culture probes (Gaver, Sengers
  and others)
• - upsides stimulates curiosity, excitement, ve
  affect
• - downsides does the effect last, is it just
  design ephemeroptera ?

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So whats the debate ?

• Understanding suppleness and experience at a deep
  level
• Where design genres are likely to succeed or not
  (cost- benefit analysis)
• The psychology of suppleness
• - ego character based interaction- affective but
  also mimicking human discourse
• - oddity, surprise and curiosity- affective and
  arousing contexts for interaction
• - changing relationship between users and
  software, end user development.. you configure
  interactive services to your own needs