OPEN ACCESS
User interfaces play an important role in Information Systems, particularly for their acceptance. But in Human Computer Interaction, perfect quality is an utopia. Despite all the design efforts, there are always situations the user interface is not suitable for: this claims for quality reparation. This paper explores self-explanatory user interfaces, i.e. user interfaces capable of “rephrasing” themselves so that to make them understandable by the user. The approach follows the principles of model-driven engineering. It consists of keeping design de-cisions contained in models alive at runtime so that to dynamically enrich the user interface by augmenting it with a set of possible questions and answers. Based on a problem space, this article details how to support self-explanation for free thanks to models. It also proposes a soft-ware infrastructure UsiExplain based on the UsiXML meta-models. An evaluation is conducted on a case study related to a car shopping website. It confirms that the approach is relevant especially for usage questions.
user interfaces, model-driven engineering, models at runtime, self explanation
Calvary G., Coutaz J., Thevenin D., Limbourg Q., Bouillon L., Vanderdonckt J. 2003. A unifying reference framework for multi-target user interfaces. Interacting With Computers Vol. 15/3, pp. 289-308.
Delisle S., Moulin B. 200210. User interfaces and help systems: from helplessness to intelligent assistance. Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 117–157. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1015179704819
Dittmar A., García Frey A., Dupuy-Chessa S. 2012. What can model-based UI design offer to end-user software engineering? In Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems, pp. 189–194. New York, NY, USA, ACM.
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2305484.2305515
Dix A., Finley J., Abowd G., Beale R. 1998. Human-computer interaction (2nd ed.)Humancomputer interaction (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Eisenstein J., Rich C. 2002. Agents and GUIs from task modelsAgents and guis from task models. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces, pp.47–54. New York, NY, USA, ACM. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/502716.502727
García Frey A., Calvary G., Dupuy-Chessa S. 2012. Users need your models! Exploiting Design Models for Explanations. In Proceedings of HCI 2012, Human Computer Interaction,
People and Computers XXVI, The 26th BCS HCI Group conference (Birmingham, UK).
García Frey A., Calvary G., Dupuy-Chessa S., Mandran N. 2013. Model-Based Self-Explanatory UIs for free, but are they valuable? In Proceedings of the 14th IFIP TC13Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT’13), 2-6 September 2013, Cape Town, South Africa. Springer.
García Frey A., Céret E., Dupuy-Chessa S., Calvary G. 2011. QUIMERA: a Quality Metamodel to Improve Design Rationale. In Proceedings of the third ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS 2011), p. 265-270. ACM Press. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1996534
García Frey A., Céret E., Dupuy-Chessa S., Calvary G., Gabillon Y. 2012. UsiComp: an extensible model-driven composerUsicomp: an extensible model-driven composer. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems, pp. 263–268. New York, NY, USA, ACM. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2305484.2305528
Gregor S., Benbasat I. 199912. Explanations from intelligent systems: theoretical foundations and implications for practice. MIS Q., Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 497–530. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/249487
Horton W. 1994. Designing and writing online documentation: hypermedia for self-supporting products. Wiley. http://books.google.fr/books?id=qc9o\_kV40NsC Jackson P. 1998. Introduction to Expert SystemsIntroduction to expert systems (3rd ed.).Boston, MA, USA, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc.
LehnertW. 1977. The process of question answering. Yale. http://books.google.fr/books?id=J3e4AAAAIAAJ
Lehnert W. 1978. The Process of Question Answering: A Computer Simulation of Cognition. Erlbaum. http://books.google.fr/books?id=iupQAAAAMAAJ
Lim BY., Dey AK. 2009. Assessing demand for intelligibility in context-aware applications.In Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, pp. 195–204. New York, NY, USA, ACM. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1620545.1620576
Lim BY., Dey AK. 2010. Toolkit to support intelligibility in context-aware applications.In Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing, pp.13–22. New York, NY, USA, ACM. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1864349.1864353
Lim BY., Dey AK., Avrahami D. 2009. Why and why not explanations improve the intelligibility of context-aware intelligent systems. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2119–2128. New York, NY, USA, ACM.http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1518701.1519023
MacLean A., Young RM., Bellotti VME., Moran TP. 199109. Questions, options, and criteria: elements of design space analysis. Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 201–250.http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327051hci0603\&4_2
Myers BA., Weitzman DA., Ko AJ., Chau DH. 2006. Answering why and why not questions in user interfaces. In CHI ’06: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems, pp. 397–406. New York, NY, USA, ACM.
Palanque P., Bastide R., Dourte L. 1993. Contextual Help for Free With Formal Dialogue Design.
Pangoli S., Paternó F. 1995. Automatic generation of task-oriented helpAutomatic generation of task-oriented help. In Proceedings of the 8th annual ACM symposium on User interface and software technology, pp. 181–187. New York, NY, USA, ACM. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/215585.215971
Purchase HC., Worrill J. 200204. An empirical study of on-line help design: features and principles. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud., Vol. 56, No. 5, pp. 539–567. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ijhc.1009
Shneiderman B., Plaisant C. 2010. Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction. Addison-Wesley. http://books.google.fr/books?id=2CfROgAACAAJ
Sukaviriya P., Foley JD. 1990. Coupling a UI framework with automatic generation of contextsensitive animated help. In Proceedings of the 3rd annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User interface software and technology, pp. 152–166. New York, NY, USA, ACM.http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/97924.97942
Vermeulen J., Vanderhulst G., Luyten K., Coninx K. 2010. PervasiveCrystal: Asking and Answering Why and Why Not Questions about Pervasive Computing Applications. In Proceedings of the 2010 Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Environments, pp.271–276. Washington, DC, USA, IEEE Computer Society. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IE.2010.56