Huddle

Abstract

Systems of connected appliances, such as home theaters and presentation rooms, are becoming commonplace in our homes and workplaces. These systems are often difficult to use, in part because users must determine how to split the tasks they wish to perform into sub-tasks for each appliance and then find the particular functions of each appliance to complete their sub-tasks. This paper describes Huddle, a new system that automatically generates taskbased interfaces for a system of multiple appliances based on models of the content flow within the multi-appliance system.

Combinatorial Optimization of Graphical User Interface Designs

“…In generative design, the goals are twofold: 1) to solve problems that are rendered hard by a large problem size or number of objectives and 2) construct designs algorithmically with high quality of the design for end users, encompassing goals such as usability, good ergonomics and user experience, and reliability and recovery from errors [62]. Demonstrated applications for GUIs include generation of graphical layouts [13], [30], [42], [46], [48], [60], [63], [64], creation of document layouts [65], multiplatform design [66]- [69], generation from program code [70], generation of forms from data descriptions [71], [72], retargeting of input spaces for ergonomics [73], retargeting of web pages [74], dialogue box layouts [75], distributed user interfaces [76], pervasive information displays [77], multiappliance services [78], and functionality design [39], as well as design for web pages [79], [80], menus [81], scatterplot visualizations [82], and widget layouts [83].…”