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."

Comments

Tech support

[Ma8thew]

This will make tech support a lot more fun.

GUI hygiene

[tsjaikdus]

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:GUI hygiene

[OhMickey]

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:GUI hygiene

[xelah]

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

[value_added]

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.

Re:The real killer app...

[GigaplexNZ]

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...

Microsoft already tried this

[joelholdsworth]

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:Let me help

[Fumus]

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.".