Interface Metaphors Research Articles

Improve Usability of Multidimensional DataExploration with Water Fountain Based 3D UserInterface Metaphor

Improve Usability of Multidimensional DataExploration with Water Fountain Based 3D UserInterface Metaphor

Investigating the Impact of Interface Metaphors on Mobile Cognitive Load and Satisfaction in Elderly Chinese Users

Investigating the Impact of Interface Metaphors on Mobile Cognitive Load and Satisfaction in Elderly Chinese Users

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH APPS AND EMPOWERMENT – A CONTRADICTION?

FemTech apps have billions of users globally. Yet, despite their popularity, we know little about these apps, often developed outside controlled and regulated healthcare. While these apps have been criticised for lacking privacy and for enforcing normative ideals on women, they are often marketed in terms of female empowerment. In this presentation, we present our analysis of the empowering potential of menstruation and pregnancy apps. We ask: How do these apps represent reproductive health? What kinds of empowering qualities are present in them? Are there any aspects of the technology that (inadvertently) counteract the empowering purpose? We investigate this through a comparative design investigation using what we call critical app-walkthrough methodology together with researcher use-diaries. We show in our analysis that there are three critical ways in which these apps represent reproductive health events to users through design. We analyze; 1) interface metaphors used to represent temporality, 2) datafication of reproductive health through input and output for intimate data tracking and 3) finally the ways predictions convey certainty over uncertainty and the implications of this. From our results, we present four design sensitivities meant to inspire designers to design for other types of period tracking experiences that might better empower bleeders; support lived temporalities, embrace uncertainty, empower the self, and design less.

Reimagining the cycle: interaction in self-tracking period apps and menstrual empowerment

FemTech, technology often in the forms of apps developed to specifically target female health issues, have billions of users globally. Yet, despite the popularity of e.g., period trackers or pregnancy apps, we know little about the potential impact of these technologies, often developed outside controlled and regulated healthcare. How interactive technology is designed, and in our case the cycle represented through the design, has the potential to shape women's understanding of menstruation. In this study we analyse the interaction design of nine of the most downloaded menstruation apps, asking how commercial menstruation apps represent the cycle through their interaction design. While previous research has criticized these types of apps for lacking privacy and for enforcing normative ideals on women, they are often marketed in terms of female empowerment and users do indeed seem to find them very useful for period and fertility tracking. However, the term 'empowerment' is today used broadly and is known for having many potential meanings. Even within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), 'empowerment' is used frequently but rarely explicitly defined. The question then becomes what empowerment could mean for menstruation tracking. In order to begin exploring the way menstruation and the period is represented in current apps and the way that future apps could design for empowerment, we engage in a comparative design investigation using what we call critical app-walkthrough methodology where an app's design is explored comprehensibly at one point in time and apps interacted with over a longer time period through researcher use-diares. Our results center around three ways in which these apps represent the cycle to users through design. We analyse; (1) interface metaphors used to represent the temporality of bleeding, (2) datafication of menstruation through input and output for intimate data tracking, and (3) the ways fertility predictions convey certainty over uncertainty. In a second step, we then explore what empowerment could mean for period trackers and how design could support empowering experiences. Finally, we present four design sensitivities meant to inspire designers to design for other types of period tracking experiences that might better empower bleeders. These are: support lived temporalities, embrace uncertainty, empower the self, and design less.

Navigating the Mobile Applications: The Influence of Interface Metaphor and Other Factors on Older Adults’ Navigation Behavior

The interface metaphor was suggested to facilitate a user’s mental model development while navigating, whereas its effectiveness is still unknown among the group of older adults. We developed an experiment to investigate how older adults navigate the mobile interfaces with and without metaphors, by evaluating the possible effects of users’ perceptual speed, task complexity, content similarity, and other related user characteristics in an integrated fashion. Results indicated that the use of interface metaphor could assist in the older adults’ navigation performance, but only for those with a higher level of perceptual speed. Additionally, we found that the older adult’s navigation behavior was significantly influenced by the task complexity, content similarity and the users’ level of technology experience. These findings can help researchers and practitioners to evaluate the effectiveness of interface metaphor on older adults’ mobile navigation behavior by identifying the possible influential factors and interpreting the behind reasons.

Use of Augmented Reality to Assist Teaching for Future Perfusionists in Extracorporeal Technology

The aim of this study was to foster the better perfusion education when providing extracorporeal circulation (ECC) technology for future perfusionists. For this purpose, we have developed an augmented reality (AR) program for ECC students. Currently, the cost of equipment and its simulator is high. Furthermore, it is desirable for ECC students to practice at any time. AR describes user experiences that add 2D (plane detection) or 3D elements to the live view from a device’s camera in a way that makes those elements appear to inhabit the real world. We can use these technologies to create AR experiences using the back camera of a smartphone or tablet. We can also build our own instrument with custom visualization and data analysis. Although AR technology may not be new, its potential in ECC student education is just beginning to be explored. Unlike other computing technologies, AR interfaces offer seamless interaction between the real and virtual worlds, a tangible interface metaphor, and a means for transitioning between real and virtual worlds. Here, we have shown our experiences of cost-effective AR technology for future perfusionists.

Enhancing Interaction with Augmented Reality through Mid-Air Haptic Feedback: Architecture Design and User Feedback

Nowadays, Augmented-Reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMD) deliver a more immersive visualization of virtual contents, but the available means of interaction, mainly based on gesture and/or voice, are yet limited and obviously lack realism and expressivity when compared to traditional physical means. In this sense, the integration of haptics within AR may help to deliver an enriched experience, while facilitating the performance of specific actions, such as repositioning or resizing tasks, that are still dependent on the user’s skills. In this direction, this paper gathers the description of a flexible architecture designed to deploy haptically enabled AR applications both for mobile and wearable visualization devices. The haptic feedback may be generated through a variety of devices (e.g., wearable, graspable, or mid-air ones), and the architecture facilitates handling the specificity of each. For this reason, within the paper, it is discussed how to generate a haptic representation of a 3D digital object depending on the application and the target device. Additionally, the paper includes an analysis of practical, relevant issues that arise when setting up a system to work with specific devices like HMD (e.g., HoloLens) and mid-air haptic devices (e.g., Ultrahaptics), such as the alignment between the real world and the virtual one. The architecture applicability is demonstrated through the implementation of two applications: (a) Form Inspector and (b) Simon Game, built for HoloLens and iOS mobile phones for visualization and for UHK for mid-air haptics delivery. These applications have been used to explore with nine users the efficiency, meaningfulness, and usefulness of mid-air haptics for form perception, object resizing, and push interaction tasks. Results show that, although mobile interaction is preferred when this option is available, haptics turn out to be more meaningful in identifying shapes when compared to what users initially expect and in contributing to the execution of resizing tasks. Moreover, this preliminary user study reveals some design issues when working with haptic AR. For example, users may be expecting a tailored interface metaphor, not necessarily inspired in natural interaction. This has been the case of our proposal of virtual pressable buttons, built mimicking real buttons by using haptics, but differently interpreted by the study participants.

Design of Interactions for Handheld Augmented Reality Devices Using Wearable Smart Textiles: Findings from a User Elicitation Study

Advanced developments in handheld devices’ interactive 3D graphics capabilities, processing power, and cloud computing have provided great potential for handheld augmented reality (HAR) applications, which allow users to access digital information anytime, anywhere. Nevertheless, existing interaction methods are still confined to the touch display, device camera, and built-in sensors of these handheld devices, which suffer from obtrusive interactions with AR content. Wearable fabric-based interfaces promote subtle, natural, and eyes-free interactions which are needed when performing interactions in dynamic environments. Prior studies explored the possibilities of using fabric-based wearable interfaces for head-mounted AR display (HMD) devices. The interface metaphors of HMD AR devices are inadequate for handheld AR devices as a typical HAR application require users to use only one hand to perform interactions. In this paper, we aim to investigate the use of a fabric-based wearable device as an alternative interface option for performing interactions with HAR applications. We elicited user-preferred gestures which are socially acceptable and comfortable to use for HAR devices. We also derived an interaction vocabulary of the wrist and thumb-to-index touch gestures, and present broader design guidelines for fabric-based wearable interfaces for handheld augmented reality applications.

The effects of 3D interface metaphor on older adults’ mobile navigation performance and subjective evaluation

Navigating vast information spaces through mobile interfaces has become a common activity in older adults' everyday lives. Studies suggested that interface metaphors could be used to facilitate users' metal model development and information processing when using mobile technologies. However, we know little about how metaphors affect older adults' mobile navigation behavior, and which user characteristics matter during this perceptual and cognitive process. To investigate this, a card interface with a 3D metaphor and a list interface without 3D metaphors were compared among twenty-two participants when performing four navigation tasks. User characteristics including demographic factors, technology experience, and user capabilities were examined. The participants' navigation performance and subjective evaluations were measured as the dependent variables. From the results, we recommend the list interface without 3D metaphors as a beneficial choice for older adults. It performed better in navigation performance, although the differences are not statistically significant. Moreover, navigation performance using the card interface with a 3D metaphor was significantly associated with participants' perceptual speed, thus this interface may be more sensitive to capability declines. Valuable insights into the older adults’ mobile navigation performance and preferences are discussed and important implications for the design of mobile navigation user interfaces are proposed based on the results. Relevance to industryThe experimental results propose a more beneficial way to present contents on a mobile user interface for older adults and provide valuable insights for the designers and industry to help them understand the older adults’ usage and perceptions towards the application of 3D metaphors when navigating with mobile interfaces.

Mapping by Observation: Building a User-Tailored Conducting System From Spontaneous Movements

Metaphors are commonly used in interface design within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Interface metaphors provide users with a way to interact with the computer that resembles a known activity, giving instantaneous knowledge or intuition about how the interaction works. A widely used one in Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) is the conductor-orchestra metaphor, where the orchestra is considered as an instrument controlled by the movements of the conductor. We propose a DMI based on the conductor metaphor that allows to control tempo and dynamics and adapts its mapping specifically for each user by observing spontaneous conducting movements (i.e., movements performed on top of fixed music without any instructions). We refer to this as mapping by observation given that, even though the systemis trained specifically for each user, this training is not done explicitly and consciously by the user. More specifically, the system adapts its mapping based on the tendency of the user to anticipate or fall behind the beat and observing the Motion Capture descriptors that best correlate to loudness during spontaneous conducting. We evaluate the proposed system in an experiment with twenty four (24) participants where we compare it with a baseline that does not perform this user-specific adaptation. The comparison is done in a context where the user does not receive instructions and, instead, is allowed to discover by playing. We evaluate objective and subjective measures from tasks where participants have to make the orchestra play at different loudness levels or in synchrony with a metronome. Results of the experiment prove that the usability of the system that automatically learns its mapping from spontaneous movements is better both in terms of providing a more intuitive control over loudness and a more precise control over beat timing. Interestingly, the results also show a strong correlation betweenmeasures taken fromthe data used for training and the improvement introduced by the adapting system. This indicates that it is possible to estimate in advance how useful the observation of spontaneous movements is to build user-specific adaptations. This opens interesting directions for creating more intuitive and expressive DMIs, particularly in public installations.

This is not the paint bucket you are looking for: the signs of Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is among the most culturally influential computer programs. Like all so ware programs, signs and (interface) metaphors are used to convey meaning to the user. This essay discusses three Photoshop metaphors using Peircean, Saussurean, and Barthesian semiotics. The tool signs are mo vated through remedia ve inter face metaphors, seemingly rendering them icons. Yet, their object is code, making them indexical. Furthermore, these signs are simultaneously motivated and arbitrary. Photoshop does not discriminate between remediated tools from different artistic practices; these tools are equal to one another, and interchangeable. Moreover, Adobe actively promotes a ‘myth of ar stry’ by employ ing various dubiously grounded interface metaphors. The tools in Photoshop function as simulacra of the tenors they metaphorically allude to. The interface-metaphors are simulacra employed for the sake of familiarity and framing, but share no relation with the symbolically represented tools. User problems dealing with legibility, and usability, may be the result.

The semiotics of medical image Segmentation.

As the interaction between clinicians and computational processes increases in complexity, more nuanced mechanisms are required to describe how their communication is mediated. Medical image segmentation in particular affords a large number of distinct loci for interaction which can act on a deep, knowledge-driven level which complicates the naive interpretation of the computer as a symbol processing machine. Using the perspective of the computer as dialogue partner, we can motivate the semiotic understanding of medical image segmentation. Taking advantage of Peircean semiotic traditions and new philosophical inquiry into the structure and quality of metaphors, we can construct a unified framework for the interpretation of medical image segmentation as a sign exchange in which each sign acts as an interface metaphor. This allows for a notion of finite semiosis, described through a schematic medium, that can rigorously describe how clinicians and computers interpret the signs mediating their interaction. Altogether, this framework provides a unified approach to the understanding and development of medical image segmentation interfaces.

Glass, Paper, Scissors: Investigating the Metaphors of the Glass Cast through Paper Prototyping

This article reflects on the importance of user feedback in early stages of the design process of Glass Cast. A 3-D interface, Glass Cast is intended for the visualization of knowledge networks, including parameters such as authorship, time, subject, discipline, and connections between documents in a corpus. The name Glass Cast refers to the working metaphor of the prototype, which is a cast sculpture in which the object of representation appears as negative space in a glass block. The participants in this study, graduate students and faculty in the humanities and social sciences, provided feedback on a low-fidelity paper prototype in the context of interviews. Their feedback is organized following the taxonomy of user-interface metaphors.

Where does fitness fit in theories of perception?

Interface theory asserts that neither our perceptual experience of the world nor the scientific constructs used to describe the world are veridical. The primary argument used to uphold this claim is that (1) evolution is driven by a process of natural selection that favors fitness over veridicality, and (2) payoffs do not vary monotonically with truth. I argue that both the arguments used to bolster this claim and the conclusions derived from it are flawed. Interface theory assumes that perception evolved to directly track fitness but fails to consider the role of adaptation on ontogenetic time scales. I argue that the ubiquity of nonmonotonic payoff functions requires that (1) perception tracks "truth" for species that adapt on ontogenetic time scales and (2) that perception should be distinct from utility. These conditions are required to pursue an adaptive strategy to mitigate homeostatic imbalances. I also discuss issues with the interface metaphor, the particular formulation of veridicality that is considered, and the relationship of interface theory to the history of ideas on these topics.

Eğitsel Web Arayüz Tasarımında Metaforlar: EMMA Adımları

— Hypermedia forms the basis of the e-learning with the active, non-linear and flexible structure. It provides a wide flexibility of movement for the learners. This allows access to a large number of educational multimedia materials. However, this learner control flexibility provided by hypermedia and abundance of information also have led to the emergence of disorientation, cognitive overload, divided attention and waste of time problems which negatively affect learner navigation performance. To cope with these problems it is expected to benefit from the metaphors as natural models in educational hypermedia. Because the metaphors may make the environment understandable and memorable to the user advantage of the concrete object, familiar facts, habits and tasks. The results from metaphorical interface design studies conducted over a 4 year period , provided the basis for this study. Based on the results of research a metaphorical interface design framework named EMMI (educational content analysis, metaphors, metaphorical interface components, Interface Design) has been developed. In this study, the pedagogical and practical implications are presented with the structure and operation of the framework

晩餐メタファインタフェース：ナイフとフォークでの食事の所作に基づくコンピュータ操作の提案

マルチタッチ環境向け操作方法「晩餐メタファインタフェース」を提案する．2 本の指示具をナイフとフォークに見立て，洋食の所作・作法を模して操作するものである．提案手法では，フォークは指示・選択の，ナイフは対象に影響を及ぼす役割を持つ．本稿では，そのコンセプトとプロトタイプ実装について報告する．

Utilizing Information "Shape" as an Interface Metaphor Based on Genre

Documents have conventions which have evolved within discourse communities and which facilitate document use. These conventions are represented in a document by visual cues that define a shape and serve as an interface metaphor in a user's interaction with a digital document. In this paper we report on the results of two studies, one of which examined the impact of . . .

A componential model for understanding the effects of composite interface metaphors on web-based task performance and learning

Two experiments describe how a composite metaphor interface (CMI) for performing website tasks can be developed using an iterative and theory-based design approach. The CMI consisted of two semantically unrelated metaphors: the library metaphor and the travel metaphor. A new componential model for predicting the effectiveness of CMIs is described and used for deriving and testing specific hypotheses. Results show that an improved version of the CMI resulted in better declarative knowledge about metaphor-interface mappings than a non-metaphorical control interface (even before the interface was first used), and in less mental effort, as measured by the clicking behavior. It also resulted in faster performance of web-based tasks, but only if differences in pre-existing declarative knowledge were taken into account. The discussion addresses i.a. the question how mismatches between interface functions, and the metaphor they belong to (confusions) can be measured and used for improving the quality of the CMI.

An Interface Metaphor, the Shadow for Tangible Augmented Reality - Mainly with the application case to a media art piece, Augmented Shadow -

An Interface Metaphor, the Shadow for Tangible Augmented Reality - Mainly with the application case to a media art piece, Augmented Shadow -

The effects of metaphorical interface on germane cognitive load in Web-based instruction

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a metaphorical interface on germane cognitive load in Web-based instruction. Based on cognitive load theory, germane cognitive load is a cognitive investment for schema construction and automation. A new instrument developed in a previous study was used to measure students’ mental activities of schema construction and automation supported by structural cues in a metaphorical interface environment. Eighty participants were randomly assigned to one of two types of instructional units with the same instructional content and different interface types (i.e., non-metaphorical interface and metaphorical interface). The results indicated that germane cognitive load positively affected learning performance while there was no relationship between germane cognitive load and students’ prior knowledge. A metaphorical interface enhanced learners’ germane cognitive load and learning performance, and both germane cognitive load and prior knowledge similarly contributed to learning performance. The findings provide implications for the advancement of cognitive load theory and the practice of instructional development.