AUGUR: Interface Adaptation for Small Screen Devices

The amount of functionality offered by nowadays applications is constantly growing, mostly leading to more and more complex user interfaces. This decreases their usability especially in settings with limited input and output capabilities like in mobile or ubiquitous computing. In these settings the interaction costs are much higher than for traditional desktop applications. Adapting the interface to the available devices as well as to the user's preferences and tasks is the key to reducing interaction costs and increasing usability of applications. In this paper, we present the AUGUR system that can automatically generate user- and device-adapted interfaces. For that purpose, we developed the FxL* algorithm which is introduced in this paper. FxL* is the first algorithm that considers the individual user as well as her current situation to determine which user interface elements should be presented. We show that it clearly outperforms algorithms that do not take the user's situation into account.