Daily Note : Adaptive Menus and Screen Size

These notes are a summary of concepts presented in “Impact of Screen Size on Performance, Awareness, and User Satisfaction With Adaptive Graphical User Interfaces.”

Leah Findlater and Joanna McGrenere. 2008. Impact of screen size on performance, awareness, and user satisfaction with adaptive graphical user interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1247–1256. https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357249

  1. Screen Size and Adaptive Menus
    • Adaptive menus positively impact performance and satisfaction on small screens compared to large screens
    • Small screens encourage users to leverage adaptive predictions more effectively
    • Reduced awareness is a side effect of high-accuracy adaptive interfaces, especially on small screens
    • Lack of control, predictability, transparency, privacy, and trust
  2. Behavioral and Design Considerations
    • Screen size effects on user behavior
      • Small screens foster reliance on adaptive predictions
      • Awareness trade-offs must be considered, particularly in constrained screen spaces
    • Adaptive interface goals
      • If broad feature awareness is needed, prioritize interfaces supporting higher user awareness
      • If expertise in a few key features is desired, awareness becomes less critical
  3. Approaches to Adaptation
    • Content adaptation
      • Reduces navigation for mobile devices, improving satisfaction
      • Challenges include maintaining user expectations and consistency
    • Control structure adaptation
      • Impacts motor memory and requires high consistency
  4. Adaptive Split Interfaces
    • Split interfaces combine static and adaptive sections
    • Predetermined split menus outperform traditional static menus
    • Preferences of adaptive split menus with item replication over static counterparts
  5. Performance and Modeling
    • Performance modeling incorporates
      • Hick-Hyman Law: Predicts decision time based on information load
      • Fitts’ Law: Relates to the time required to reach a target
      • Stability considerations for adaptive menus
    • Performance predictions across menu types
      • Frequency-based and recency-based split menus
      • Traditional static menus
      • Morphing menus (items repositioned by frequency)