Cell Phone Prototype Interface Design - Coursework Example

? Prototype interface design affiliation: Lecturer: Although different web browser have been standardized such that the user can access information on different platforms on the web, it has not been the case for some phones like unbranded small format keyfob phone. A survy that was carried out on 20 unbranded small format keyfob phone users showed that less than 205 of the users are able to accomplish whether task they are carrying out. More than 80% prefers other mobile devices such as smartphone. The research was meant to find out how effective is the existing web browsing interface in unbranded small format keyfob phone with an intention of improving it. The paper gives the details of a web browsing interface that will improve and enhance user’s web browsing in three dimensions; through automatically generating a mobile site for browsing, utilization of orientation sensor information to detect text to speech and natural interaction and offering a speech interface to simplify navigation and support iterative task’s dialog programming. The nature of the interface that a cell phone has can be an issue when the user finds it difficult and cannot accomplish a task effectively. User interface design refers to designing of the mobile phone interface with the primary focus on ht user’s interaction and experience. The primary objective of designing a user interface is to come up with the interface that will ensure that the user interact with the device with a lot of simplicity and efficiency in regards to accomplishing a task. Designing a good interface entails ensuring that the interface enables the user to finish the task at hand without any ambiguity. Introduction According to Pew (2010), more that 80% of UK adult citizens has a mobile phone. More than 30 percent of these uses their mobile phones to access and browse the internet. The leading market researcher projects a drastic increase of mobile phone internet users in the next five years. Although different web browser have been standardized such that the user can access information on different platforms on the web, it has not been the case for some phones like unbranded small format keyfob phone. A survy that was carried out on 20 unbranded small format keyfob phone. The key contributing factor includes limited screen size, difficult navigation, finger issues and the ability to switch between different web locations. To facilitate a better user interaction and experience, web site developers have developed web site for mobile phones, which time-consuming and pricy (Bigham, J et al, 2008). Though the web site can be customized to be used by mobile phone browsers, there some features which cannot be effectively displayed in some phone due to navigation difficulties and limited screen size. In addition, the mobile users switch between browsing and other activities. The fat finger problem still becomes an issue when the user is carrying out multiple tasks in the phone. The paper tries to assess the issues that the unbranded small format keyfob phone users face and come up with a prototype web browsing interface that will solve the issues in three dimensions. First, the idea of recreating a website for mobile phones is replaced by developing gadget based interface that automatically transform any web site to fit the mobile phone using the web content. Second, is to solve the issue of lack of focus on the screen or the buttons when walking or driving using audio-to-text mobile comprehension (Vadas et al 2006). A combination of orientation sensor information with text to speech is also proposed to support the need for mobile phone web browser context switching. Third, is a speech interface integration to support dialog programming for repetitive task and ease web navigation. I will design a mobile web browser that will integrate all the above solution for an unbranded small format keyfob phone. A survey on unbranded keyfob phone usage Apart from mobile web browsers, there are other applications that can be used to access the internet via the phone. To facilitate an effective browser interface design for unbranded small format keyfob phone, I conducted a survey to understand the users’ opinions and experience. I followed a user centered design method that was used in previous research on pre-designed, formative users. The students in a college were randomly recruited by asking them whether they have ever used unbranded small format keyfob phone. Those who have ever used this type of a phone and were willing to participate were recruited and asked different question relating to their interaction and experience in the usage of the phone to access the information in the internet. A total of 20 participants willingly joined the recruitment. The distribution of the participant was: age Percentage 20-30 68 % 30-40 10 % 40-50 12 % 50 and above 10 % The survey entailed asking of a total of 15 questions and each survey lasted for approximately 30 minutes. The key activities for using the unbranded small format keyfob phone was while lying in bed, waiting and walking. There was less respond on driving due to the fact that most students do not own personal cars. In regard to purpose, 72 % of the respondent use the phone for e-mail, 64% for reading news, 28% for search 64% for weather, 73% for accessing social media and 36% for playing games. 80% liked the design of the phone and its application but only 20% were satisfied with phones web browsing features (Nichols Hua, and Barton, 2008). The key reasons why most participants dislike the web browser feature include poor content layout, and difficulty of the display in browsing and skimming. These results implied that a lot of improvement needs to be done as far as the web browser interface of unbranded small format keyfob phone is concerned. Proposed Read4me browser interface prototype The prototype tries to improve mobile phone browsing in three key aspects: utilization of orientation sensor information with text-to-speech technique to provide speech interface and boost continuo reading while switching task, provision of speech interface to simplify navigation and iterative task dialog programming support. The usability features of the proposed mobile website interface Enhancing mobile responsiveness through Continuous reading through natural interaction with TTS The design strive at ensuring that the mobile phone responses effectively to the user s regardless of whether the user is moving, stationary of in a car. It is evident reading it is not convenient to read the web content in unbranded small format keyfob phone. This becomes worst when it comes to walking or driving. The paper recommends the use of orientation sensor information in detecting text-to-speech and natural interactions. The proposed mobile web interface is able to automatically detect some particular conditions and react accordingly so that the phone can function in both hands-free and hands-on condition. The proposed prototype gives a dual operation states, hear and say, look and point and use orientation information in providing smooth changing from one condition to another. The first state is for hands free condition while the second state supports the looking and pointing on the screen’s condition. In the second state, the user can skim or read the content of the web page like normally and use the thumb to press the menu keys to scroll, click and even zoom the page. Conversely, the user can listen to the content of the web page parsed by Read4Me browser and read by text-to-speech in the Hear & Say state. In the lather state, the R4M browser reads and highlights the sentence so that the user can simply identify the sentence being spoken by the TTS as shown below. The two conditions can initiate or trigger switching from Hear & Say state to Look & Point state: the first is when the user puts the phone in the pocket or insider the car while the second is when the user lift the hone towards the ear. Conversely, the phone automatically switches to the Look & Point state when the user places the phone in a position that can be viewed as shown diagram below. Enhanced consistency through automatic mobilization of web sites Some website have mobile version which were designed specifically for mobile phones. However, the types of hardware and software used in different mobile phones differ. This makes the development of mobile version versions tedious since a mobile version for every type of a phone has to be developed. This paper proposes a gadget based interface that automatically transforms the contents of any web pages into a standardized display format for that particular mobile phone (Darris & Robert, 2010) This will benefit both gadget manufactures and the web developers. The proposed R4M browser interface utilizes the previous information of the website in dynamically creating mobile web site. When the user navigates to a web page which is designed for a personal computer or tablet, R4M gives the user an option to mobilize the site. The option for changing the layout and the organization of the page content enables the R4M browser to transform the content into mobile phone browser compatible format (Smith, 2010). The procedures and algorithm behind the interface entails the R4M browser resending the URL to the server that parsed the web page information to regenerate a mobile compatible website using a user interface which is like that for mobile application. Unlike the traditional way of creating the mobile version of the application which can take more than two weeks, the proposed mobile phone web user interface accomplish the task instantly and real time. Enhanced relevancy through Speech interface and Dialog programming The most prevalent issue when it comes to selecting the correct textbox by mobile users is the fat finger problem. This refers to where the user is unable to select the correct textbox or character due to some factors such as old age, vibration in a moving car or shaking. The R4M browser provides an option whereby instead of typing and clicking, the user can speak to it. The use of speech in mobile browsing has various benefits which include easily asking the browser to go skim some key words rather that going through the entire web page. It is also easy to inform the browser to search for a specific link instead of using a button to click. R4M browser interface has an amazing feature where the use can jump to a particular point in the webpage by only uttering some words in that point (Gaal, et. al., 2010). Moreover, the user can switch instantly to another option by choosing the saved bookmarks. For instance, instead of typing he URL for New York Times journal, the user only utter the words “go to new York times”. The proposed web browser interface design will implement three of common commands “enter”,“go”, and “click” . The user should always use more than one word to increase the success rate of speech recognition (Yu & Miller, 2010). Design evaluation To assess the usability test of R4M mobile web user interface, a design usability test id conducted to enhance acceptable levels of speech recognition. The usability test is based on the number of words used in speech recognition such as “go”, “go to” or “go to XXX”. It was evident that the success rate for “go” was 10 % against 60% for “go to” and 95% for “go to XXX”. On the other hand, the “enter” command was recognized without the need to add any preposition with a success rate of over 90% in most cases (Miyashita, H. et. al. 2007). The tests were done based on comparing the commands and the result other which have been designed to recognize speech such as Android. R4M has proven to support the above discussed commands currently but this has been applied in various aspects for instance locating a person’s contacts in a website or displaying some pictures. The only key challenge with this mobile web user interface is that it does not create a log of the speeches. This implies that the user will have to utter the same words every time he or she is using it. This can work for some particular task but it may if difficult in other instances. This can be solved by extending the R4M speech interface to support dialog programming by creating a log of the speech commands in the macros. The browser will try to locate the exact said speech by running through the commands saved in the macro via fuzzy logics. In case there is no command in the macro that merges the spoken one, R4M browser will prompt for user demonstration so that it can learn and save it in the macro. The macro viewer can be used to view the existing scripts while macro editor can help in editing the scripts. Viewer prototype design R4M Macro viewer R4M Macro editor Programmer’s viewer Challenges and restriction The design has given a prototype which will ensure improved mobile reading and browsing in three dimensions. However, there are still challenges that need to be addressed further. The most prevalent is the sensitivity of the orientation sensor in regards to correct interpretation of the user’s speech. Further investigation should be done to give direction on effective use of orientation sensor. In addition, the use parametization of scripts in dialog programming should also be given more consideration. For instance, if the interface has leaned “show me hedgehog”, can it also show picture of peacock automatically replacing the word hedgehog with peacock? An algorithm to achieve such relations should be developed. Conclusion There have been a lot of challenges when it comes to mobile browsing due to the mobile phones physical design. An unbranded small format keyfob phone has various features that enhance this limitation such as the screen size and the nature of menu buttons. The paper tried to improve web browsing interface in an unbranded small format key fob phone by designing a mobile web browser prototype called Read4Me (R4M) which solves the issues by providing a three tier mobile browsing and reading prototype. This entails use of orientation sensor information in detecting natural interaction, generation of an unbranded small format keyfob phone user friendly mobile web sites, and availing speech interface and dialog programming. R4M prototype is a proposed prototype which has demonstrated the mentioned ideas. More efforts should be directed to use of orientation sensor and the use parametization of scripts in dialog programming. References Bigham, J., Prince, C. and Ladner, R. Webanywhere: A Screenreader On-the-go. W4A '08, 2008. Cypher, A. Watch What I do – Programming by Demonstration. Chapter 9. The MIT Press. Darris, H. & Robert C. M. 2010. Smart Bookmarks: Automatic Retroactive Macro Recording on the Web. UIST, 2007. Freire, A. et. al. Using screen readers to reinforce web accessibility education, Proceedings of the 12th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, 2007. Gaal, A. et. al.2010. Towards an Open Source Screen Reader: Screenreader Usability Extensions (SUE). In Proceedings of ICCHP, 2008. Miyashita, H. et. al. 2007. Aibrowser for multimedia: introducing multimedia content accessibility for visually impaired users. Proceedings of SIGACCESS on Computers and accessibility,. Nichols, J., Hua, Z., and Barton, J. 2008. Highlight: A System for Creating and Deploying Mobile Web Applications. Proc.UIST2008, ACM,. Nielsen: US Smartphone Penetration to Be over 50% in 2011, GPS Business News, 2010. Smith, A. 2010. Mobile Access 2010, Pew Internet & American Life Project,. Vadas, K., Patel, N., Lyons, K., Starner, T. and Jacko, J. 2006. Reading on-the-go: a comparison of audio and hand-held displays. In MobileHCI, Yu, C.H. and Miller, R.C. 2010. Enhancing web page readability for non-native readers. Proc.CHI, ACM Read More