The document discusses ways to improve usability through adaptive user interfaces and manipulation of mental models, attention, navigation, and visualization. It proposes that effects like color changes and size manipulations can be used to enhance navigation, dialog style, mental models and clarity but may annoy experts. An adaptive interface is suggested to prevent annoyance while improving efficiency and effectiveness for novices and experts. The adaptive interface approach aims to help cross the chasm between novice and expert users.

1. hgil@ui.co.il yochayk@microsoft.com

3. Founded in 1998
Over 800 Projects
Over 300 Customers
The leading usability company in Israel
Entrepreneur in WPF design and implementation
Joined WizMagic.com from LA to start Next GUI:
Located in US
Specializes in WPF and Silverlight Applications.
www.NextGUI.com

4. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm
Watch your step while crossing

8. “The SPSS Processor is terminating due to a
catastrophic error. Any working data file is lost. An
attempt has been made to perform an input or
output operation which is inconsistent with the
mode of the file, e.g. direct access on a sequential
file. This is a programming erro Restart the
processor?”

14. Edward R. Tufte, Visual Explanations: Images
and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (1992)

15. 300
250
200
150
W rd
100
50 China
Population
(10^8)
0
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

16. The 90’s40’s
Late
Early 80’s
Early 60’s
2008
70’s

18. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm:
Enhanced Navigation
Improved Dialog style
Better Mental Modeling
Clearer Visualization
Crossing the Chasm Summary
Watch your step while crossing

20. Navigation model is the user's knowledge of
her present location in the application and of
the way to reach other specific locations or
processes.

23. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm:
Enhanced Navigation
Improved Dialog style
Better Mental Modeling
Clearer Visualization
Crossing the Chasm Summary
Watch your step while crossing

24. Attention is simply the
assignation of the
mechanisms of analysis to a
limited part of the perceptual
field. (Neisser , 1974)

25. 13*13=
12*12= 144
14*25= 350
18*25=
17/6=
12/5 = 2.4
1.3*4= 5.2
1.4*6=
125/5+7= 32
124/4+9=
12*(3+5)= 96
11*(9+6)=
4+5/2*4= 14
2+6/4*5=
7-8+9*2= 17
7-9+12*3=
5*5*8= 200
6*6*7=

28. The red color attract attention and harm the
main task – phrasing a sentence.
Activating the speller in the correct timing of
the workflow (Enter/ Save/ Print/ Send),
improves the human performance.
Save money …

29. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm:
Enhanced Navigation
Improved Dialog style
Better Mental Modeling
Clearer Visualization
Crossing the Chasm Summary
Watch your step while crossing

30. When I move files from the
draft folder to the final folder,
do they really move?

33. The mental model is knowledge of how the
system works, what its components
are, how they are related, what the internal
processes are, and how they affect the
components.
Carroll, J. M., & Olson, J. R. (1987).
Mental models in human-computer
interaction: Research issues about what
the user of software knows.

34. A model the user have about the system:
What does it contain?
Why does it contain it?
How does it behave?
Why does it behave this way?
It enables the user to work with the system
and give answers to questions like
What will happen if I will press here?
How can I … ?

36. When turning the mouse wheel forward (i.e.
toward the table) what should happened
zoom in or zoom out?
The answer depends of the mental model
you adopt. If it is a page that you have in
mind, then it is zoom out, but if it is a
camera, then it is zoom in.
MS choose the camera mental model. About
half of the world is paying the price 
With WPF it is easy to solve the problem:

39. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm:
Enhanced Navigation
Improved Dialog style
Better Mental Modeling
Clearer Visualization
Crossing the Chasm Summary
Watch your step while crossing

41. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm:
Enhanced Navigation
Improved Dialog style
Better Mental Modeling
Clearer Visualization
Crossing the Chasm Summary
Watch your step while crossing

42. Why?
In order to improve Usability
(effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction)
What?
Mental Model
Attention
Load
How?
Color
Size
Movement

44. Turning the page
Zooming
Presets Animation
Patient files
Speller
Tafiti
News

45. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm:
Watch your step while crossing
The Expert-Novice problem
The solution: Adaptive user interface
Adaptive user interface Summary

48. Experts
Movement Movement disturbs
ATM Word
enhances and cause sense of
memory slowing down
Frequent
Rare
use
Use
Movement is Movement
Pregnancy self test VS inimprove days
its first
needed for
understanding understanding
Novice

49. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm:
Watch your step while crossing
The Expert-Novice problem
The solution: Adaptive user interface
Adaptive user interface Summary

51. How can one use a smart tag in word editor
using only the keyboard, not using the
mouse?

52. Right click = Shift+F10

53. Press Alt+Shift+F10

54. The time needed to reach a target is
proportional to the distance from the target
and the size of the target
t~d/s
t = time to complete the action
d = distance between hand (mouse) and the
target.
s = Target size

56. If you want to shorten operation time,
Make the most used buttons bigger
If you want to raise the features usage,
Make the unused buttons bigger
In both cases it might improve efficiency.

57. UX as a Chasm – A short Intro. to your brain
Crossing the Chasm:
Watch your step while crossing
The Expert-Novice problem
The solution: Adaptive user interface
Adaptive user interface Summary

58. What do we change?
Effect’s length
Effect’s amplitude
What is the direction?
Usually down to zero
But not always, like in the buttons size.

59. Will we lose the audience/ users/ rating?
Is the answer different for leisure
applications or professional ones?

60. Part 1 – There is a Chasm
Part 2 – Tools to narrow the chasm
Part 3 – The next step – Adaptive UI

63. Better Usability
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Satisfaction
More Value to the user
More profit
Get Professional help
More Information www.NextGUI.com

64. The human brain is limited, but the
demands are in constant progress – This is
the usability chasm origin.
A professional usability design may help
narrowing the chasm.
WPF make it even easier for the usability
engineers:

65. By wisely using
Color changes
Size changes
Movements
We can manipulate
mental models
attention
And get
Enhanced Navigation
Improved Dialog style
Better Mental Models
Clearer Visualization

66. Even if you used the tool wisely, you are trapped
in the Novice – Expert dilemma:
The effects help the novice, but annoy the expert
We proposed the adaptive UX, as a solution.
It helps in:
Preventing the annoyance
Improve efficiency (shorten operation time)
Improve effectiveness (raising the feature use)
In most cases effects should extinct with time/
usage
This is only the beginning of correct use of WPF
abilities, a lot more is expected in the next few
years.

67. hgil@ui.co.il yochayk@microsoft.com

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