Bridging mobile device configuration to the user experience under budget constraint

Abstract

In this study, we aim at satisfying the highly diversified demands of mobile users, by recommending the optimal mobile device configuration per user given the user’s budget constraint and the user-dependent application usage. We explore the customizing system that bridges the mobile device configuration to the user experience, and its core component is modeling both the smartphone price and user experience given any device configuration. To explore the price model, we first identify the major components (e.g., processor, display, camera, etc.) of the smartphone with regard to the price. We then collect the detailed configurations of the major components together with the prices for 2500 smartphones, and use gradient tree boosting to predict the price based on the device configurations. To model the user experience, we first identify the user perceivable features that have significant influence on the user experience, perform detailed survey and construct model to infer the user experience based on the user perceivable features given the application usage. We then map the configurations of the major smartphone components to the user perceivable features, and obtain the complete user experience model given device configurations. Finally, by using the customizing system, we conduct comprehensive design space exploration to find the optimal configuration for each individual customer. Overall, our evaluation results show our customizing system is able to accurately recommend the optimal mobile device, which maximizes user experience under given budget, based on the user’s past application usage.