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These Aren't the Commands You're Looking For: Addressing False Feedforward in Feature-Rich Software

Authors:

Benjamin Lafreniere,

Parmit K. Chilana,

Michael A. TerryAuthors Info & Claims

UIST '15: Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology

Pages 619 - 628

https://doi.org/10.1145/2807442.2807482

Published: 05 November 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The names, icons, and tooltips of commands in feature-rich software are an important source of guidance when locating and selecting amongst commands. Unfortunately, these cues can mislead users into believing that a command is appropriate for a given task, when another command would be more appropriate, resulting in wasted time and frustration. In this paper, we present command disambiguation techniques that inform the user of alternative commands before, during, and after an incorrect command has been executed. To inform the design of these techniques, we define categories of false-feedforward errors caused by misleading interface cues, and identify causes for each. Our techniques are the first designed explicitly to solve this problem in feature-rich software. A user study showed enthusiasm for the techniques, and revealed their potential to play a key role in learning of feature-rich software.

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Cited By

Mathis FMyers BLafreniere BGlueck MMarques D(2024)MR-Driven Near-Future Realities: Previewing Everyday Life Real-World Experiences Using Mixed RealityProceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction10.1145/3678957.3685748(76-85)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678957.3685748
Khurana AChilana PKostakos VKay JHoang T(2024)Understanding Novice Users' Mental Models of Gesture Discoverability and Designing Effective OnboardingCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3678370(290-295)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675094.3678370
Perraud RTabard AMalacria S(2024)Tutorial mismatches: investigating the frictions due to interface differences when following software video tutorialsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661511(1942-1955)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661511
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

These Aren't the Commands You're Looking For: Addressing False Feedforward in Feature-Rich Software
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UIST '15: Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology

November 2015

686 pages

ISBN:9781450337793

DOI:10.1145/2807442

General Chair:
Celine Latulipe
UNC Charlotte, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Bjoern Hartmann
UC Berkeley, USA
,
Tovi Grossman
Autodesk Research, Canada

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 November 2015

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Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

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UIST '15

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UIST '15: The 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

November 11 - 15, 2015

NC, Charlotte, USA

Acceptance Rates

UIST '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 70 of 297 submissions, 24%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 561 of 2,567 submissions, 22%

Upcoming Conference

UIST '25

Sponsor:
sigchi
sigchi

The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

September 28 - October 1, 2025

Busan , Republic of Korea

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Cited By

Mathis FMyers BLafreniere BGlueck MMarques D(2024)MR-Driven Near-Future Realities: Previewing Everyday Life Real-World Experiences Using Mixed RealityProceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction10.1145/3678957.3685748(76-85)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678957.3685748
Khurana AChilana PKostakos VKay JHoang T(2024)Understanding Novice Users' Mental Models of Gesture Discoverability and Designing Effective OnboardingCompanion of the 2024 on ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing10.1145/3675094.3678370(290-295)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675094.3678370
Perraud RTabard AMalacria S(2024)Tutorial mismatches: investigating the frictions due to interface differences when following software video tutorialsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661511(1942-1955)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661511
Khurana ASubramonyam HChilana P(2024)Why and When LLM-Based Assistants Can Go Wrong: Investigating the Effectiveness of Prompt-Based Interactions for Software Help-SeekingProceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640543.3645200(288-303)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640543.3645200
Khurana AGlueck MChilana P(2024)Do I Just Tap My Headset?Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36314517:4(1-28)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631451
Ashtari NMullins RQian CWexler JTenney IPushkarna M(2023)From Discovery to Adoption: Understanding the ML Practitioners’ Interpretability JourneyProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3596046(2304-2325)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563657.3596046
Gmeiner FYang HYao LHolstein KMartelaro N(2023)Exploring Challenges and Opportunities to Support Designers in Learning to Co-create with AI-based Manufacturing Design ToolsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580999(1-20)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580999
Masson DVermeulen JFitzmaurice GMatejka J(2022)Supercharging Trial-and-Error for Learning Complex Software ApplicationsProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3501895(1-13)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3501895
Bailly GMalacria S(2022)Command SelectionHandbook of Human Computer Interaction10.1007/978-3-319-27648-9_19-1(1-35)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27648-9_19-1
Guo P(2021)Ten Million Users and Ten Years Later: Python Tutor’s Design Guidelines for Building Scalable and Sustainable Research Software in AcademiaThe 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3472749.3474819(1235-1251)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3472749.3474819
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