Color Scheme Adaptation to Enhance User Experience on Smartphone Displays Leveraging Ambient Light

Abstract

With the rapid development of information technology, mobile devices have exhibited increasing popularity in recent years. To support the anytime-anywhere service model of mobile devices, one important problem related to the screen display arises when using these devices (e.g., smartphone and tablet) under various lighting conditions. On one hand, it is hard for users to see the display clearly under strong lighting conditions (e.g., sunlight). On the other hand, the screen appears dazzling under weak lighting conditions. This problem related to the mobile device display can significantly degrade user experience and undermine the successful deployment of the anytime-anywhere mobile service model. Existing solutions mainly focus on the automatic adjustment of brightness level under different light conditions. We show that merely utilizing brightness level to solve the display problem is not enough to maintain the user experience under both strong and weak lighting scenarios through experimenting with over 200 volunteers. In this work, we take a different approach by investigating automatic color scheme adjustment to improve user experience. We find that Readability, Comfort level, and Similarity are major factors that contribute to user experience. In recognizing these problems, we propose a system, ColorVert, which utilizes the DKL color space to adaptively transform color schemes by sensing ambient light to improve user experience under various lighting scenarios. Our experimental evaluation with over 200 precipitants and various mobile devices demonstrates that ColorVert is more effective in both maintaining as well as improving user experience compared with the existing automatic brightness adjustment system.