So hello everyone.
My name is Nicole Pong.
I'm from INRIA Lille in France.
I will present the work that I have
done with my PhD advisor, Sylvain Malacria,
about the awareness, usage, and discovery
of swipe-revealed hidden widget in iOS.
We can call them Swhidget, in short, for the moment.
So let's talk about what is a swhidget.
It's hidden at the bezel of the screen.
It can provide an important function in an application,
or it can contain a certain information
like exact timing a message was sent.
Swhidget exists on different platforms,
notably on handheld device such as Android and iOS--
devices that have very limited screen space.
But we choose to focus on iOS swhidget
for this preliminary research.
So what characterize swhidget?
These swhidgets have these points in common no matter
how different platform they are in.
First, they remain hidden under the bezel.
Second, user only needs to reveal this control
with a swipe gesture.
They provide access to information
and frequent function of the application.
Sometimes, it is the only access.
But unlike gesture, they do not trigger any command directly.
They rely on the physical manipulation metaphor,
so the design is kind of in between gesture and tap
and touch interactions.
It's an area that is [INAUDIBLE] explored of the design space
which is interesting to study.
Most importantly, they have no signifiers to inform or even
to hint users about their existence.
This is the main interest of our research,
and I'll detail it now.
HCI guidelines advise to expose controls
and use clear interaction interface structures.
It's often done with perceptible signifiers that
inform users about the presence of interactive elements
which is exactly what swhidget are missing.
Research has mostly investigated the performance
of novel edge-based interaction techniques
such as menus or keyboards.
But these do not rely on the physical metaphor
that may help users to uncover these features.
To the best of our knowledge, there are no--
there are very little public data
on the current usage of swhidgets.
So against the guidelines, very few public data
that can explain the situation.
We start getting curious and asking questions such as--
do user know swhidgets?
Do user use them?
How do users discovered them?
And how do users think about them?
In order to approach these issues,
we conduct two different studies.
The first one is the laboratory study
that we recruit 28 participants for face
to face observation plus interview
to treat the first two questions.
And later on, a second online questionnaire
allowed us to reach for 144 participants
to find out furthermore in details about the four
questions.
These two study have various task
categorized in four different application-- the control
panel, the notification center, the SMS, and also the system
provide the mailbox in the show in chart.
To keep the study short, we select only a few tasks
in each application.
For the lab study in blue, we want
to compare participant's knowledge of each input method
type.
So we focus on tasks with alternatives
to the use of swhidget.
For the online study in pink, we focus more on swhidget
to know if participant knew them,
and how they discovered them.
Our first study is the laboratory study.
So we have a procedure in three parts--
general questions, task section, and an interview section that
contains demonstration.
After filling out the general question about their background
and experience with iOS system, participants
enter the task section where we observe if they know about
swhidget before we show them.
During this section, I ask participant
to show me all the input methods that they
know to solve the task.
For instance, asking, do you know how to turn on the Wi-Fi?
And then, do you know other ways to turn on Wi-Fi?
I will ask the question until they don't know any.
I note down the order of what they know
and what they don't so that I can show them in the input
method that they don't know--
when we reach to the interview section.
Finally, in the interview section,
I demonstrate all the input methods
that a participant had missed during the task section
and discuss with them how they feel about swhidget in general.
By this way, we can observe that's one strategy participant
use for their daily tasks.
We categorize these strategy into four degrees of knowledge.
The primary, as you can see, is the method
a participant use first when asked to perform the task.
Productive is for the methods that participants
use when asked to perform the task but not necessarily
the first one.
Known is for the methods that participant did nothing
to use to perform the task but report knowing them
during the interview section.
Unknown is the input methods that participant did not
use in the task section and did not recognize in the interview
section.
In addition, we say that an input method
is used when it is in the primary or productive level
for the participant.
And aware, when it's not unknown.
Move on to our results--
for this 28 participants who are knowledgeable with iPhones--
this is a chart showing how participants first
solved each task.
So the failure to complete an operation in gray
was rather infrequent with 87% of all operation completed.
Primary use of swhidgets in pinkish
depends a lot on the task and participant
such as the-- to delete swhidget is high
while the markAs read or unread and reply email is low,
which is interesting because these mail comments are
in the same swhidget menu.
Swhidget were the most frequent primary interaction
type with 62% complete trials.
However, distribution of participant
by the number of tasks they complete
with the swhidget as primary was rather
unbalanced-- suggesting that their preference of swhidget
is quite uneven among participants.
This is the distribution chart of four degrees of knowledge
that I have mentioned before for swhidgets.
Participants were aware of the swhidget in 67% after trials.
But the comparison between two columns on the left
shows that the awareness depends a lot on the swhidget again.
The dark pink is for primary use which
make most of the pinkish area.
It shows that the participant is aware of a swhidget, tend
to use it first.
However, the light pink area are big in some columns which
means that an important proportion of participants
were aware of swhidget when present to them,
but did nothing about using it by themselves.
So our partial answers to the research question
was, yes, they know swhidget but unevenly.
And yes, they use swhidget when they know them.
With the fact that the swhidget is unevenly known,
we want to reach a larger population.
And we want to know more in details
how user feel about swhidgets.
So we put an online questionnaire
with more detail question.
This online questionnaire is about 45 minutes,
in order to know more on discovery and user's
experience using swhidgets.
The protocol of this study also have three parts--
the general question, the task section,
and the question about swhidget.
After the general questions, we pass on the task section.
Our intention to this study is that we
want to know exactly how participants know and feel
about a swhidget.
So this time, in the task section,
we show participants all the possible interaction techniques
that they can do to solve the task.
Then we ask a deeper question on the adaption, the discovery,
and the source of knowledge-- how they discovered them.
At the end of the task--
because we have shown all the input methods--
we ask respondent to rank them in their favorite order.
The third part of the online study
is a statement evaluation to know how
participants think of swhidget.
And I'll show some statement that has an effect later on.
So the result of the online study-- we
collect 144 participants.
This time the participants are even more knowledgeable
with iPhone than those of the lab study.
Among four applications, I think this time
they know an average of 3.64 of the application.
This is the preferred input method from the different tasks
of this study.
As you can see, swhidgets are clear favorite
such as flashlight and Wi-Fi, except for deleting mail,
again, finding the exact same time in SMS.
And this is the distribution and frequency
of usage concerning swhidgets.
As you can see, there are four tasks
were swhidget are the most value interaction type--
flashlight, Wi-Fi, reveal Notification Center,
and reveal Control Panel.
Usage of swhidget is low on mail and SMS again.
We collect some feedback from the participants
about the reason why they did not use each swhidget.
For message arrival time, it's simply
because they don't know the swhidget-- confirming
our thoughts on the discoverability issue.
For the deleting mails is either because they
use another application such as Gmail,
or because they have another habits like they prefer
to read all mails in sequence--
deciding for each if it should be deleted
and directly from the mail view.
Another interesting point is the purple color
which stands for participants who reported that they
forgot about swhidget.
It remains very low.
It means that once the participant knows
about the swhidget, it's unlikely to forget it.
All participant in operations exploration of the interface
was the most frequently reported source of discovery, which
is 43, followed by the accidental activation
compares to other means.
The final part of the questionnaire
provide more clues about how swhidgets support exploration
of the interface.
For example, most participants agreed
that when they discovered swhidget,
they play with it until they find all the possible way
to use it.
They also expect similar screen layout
to host similar swhidget.
On the other hand, participants were
divided on the idea that having discover a swhidget,
they should expect it can be swiped in another direction
to reveal the function.
In the final part of the questionnaire,
we also investigate if despite swhidget lack of visibility,
there could be some kind of logic in their design
that can guide their use.
Participants noticed a swhidget follows a similar logic
and understand this logic--
they can use it to find swhidget.
But they can also notice when application failed
to follow this common logic.
And this logic can guess so strongly in their head that
they cannot think about another way to solve the task.
So our answer to these four research questions--
the online questionnaire confirmed the answer
from the first study--
participant mostly discovers swhidget
by exploring the interface in.
Yes.
They can have a logic of applying swhidget
but they realize that this logic can not apply
to some other applications.
I present a preliminary work in this--
in the study of swhidget which has limitations
that should be addressed in future works.
It focused on iOS, but other systems should be studied to.
Participants are in the wild range of age,
and different result could hold for specific populations
such as teenagers and elders.
Due to the recruitment process, participants
were knowledgeable users of iOS system.
Longitudinal studies should be conducted
to validate what participants said in their online study.
And it should also help to understand
how user experience with swhidget evolves over time.
Finally, we will address the design of swhidget
that are easier to discover including
the creation of guidelines for swhidget
and perhaps, new signifier less designed.
Thank you for your attention.
I will now answer questions.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE] Questions.
No.
Questions.
No.
Yeah.
So one important point is you're all work is subjective, I mean,
evaluation.
Subjective?
I mean, the qualitative evaluation, mostly.
So can I go to the first study results?
The first study result?
Online study.
The online study.
OK.
So the online study.
Here.
Yes.
OK so what are the takeout from here?
The takeouts from here is that swhidget
remains the favorite, the best way that our participants used.
But they are evenly used because of their habits.
Some participants were reported, oh, I
don't use the system mailbox.
I only use Gmail which is another application, which has
different logic of swhidgets.
Did you observe like how much time
they actually-- in the swhidgets support particular tasks?
How much time they spend, or those kind
of quantitative results, I mean, how much time
is spent to do a task in swhidgets--
through swhidgets?
No we didn't do that.
Because this is the first study.
Wait a minute.
No, this is the online study--
because this online questionnaire.
This is--
Just the whole idea.
--different from the first study.
We try to show them all the way they can do
and we have them to rank their favorite.
And this is the answer.
OK.
Any, any questions?
Oh, sure.
Hello.
[INAUDIBLE] came from Arthur University.
Do you have any recommendation of how
OS will design guideline to help users to discover the swhidget?
For the moment, with these two results of the discovery,
we have some more in details interview
and the answer is from the online study too.
We think that, well, users prefer
to discover rather than learn these swhidget.
So I would say that learning is fun,
but for swhidget, discovery is even more exciting.
Because we have so many participants telling us that,
oh, I don't know about that.
Oh, I will definitely use it.
But this is their problem-- that they have no signifiers.
So I will try to propose, perhaps,
an answer in the end of my thesis of this kind
of discoverabilities--
how to improve it.
Does that answer your questions?
Yup.
If there is no other question-- yeah,
you can go ahead with another.
For example, in early version of iOS, if you tap on the screen,
that screen bounces back to have users
to discover there is some camera feature behind the sliding
of the screen--
so those kind of some techniques are already
existing to reveal in those swhidgets.
So did you plan or did you studied
this kind of discovery--
having features are actually helping users
to discover the swhidgets?
Mm-hmm.
I am not sure if I really understand the question.
Yeah.
OK.
Maybe we can talk later.
Yeah.
Perhaps we can talk later on.
OK.
So any other question?
OK.
So let's thank the speaker again.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]