SHF: Small: Leveraging User Preferences for Mobile User Experience Improvement

University Of Houston, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

Mobile users always have demanding requirements on gaining an excellent user experience which is the top challenge faced by todays mobile device designers and producers. From computer system perspective, the battery life (i.e., energy) and quality-of-service (QoS) (i.e., performance) are the two major factors to the user experience. Effectively balancing these two factors is essential to enable a high mobile user experience. There have been studies on achieving the optimal trade-offs between energy and performance for various computing platforms, but they are not adaptable to the emerging mobile platforms which are much more user-centric. Various users have diverse perceptions on the device with the same energy and performance, and even the same user perceives the same energy and performance differently at different circumstances. The individual user?s preferences are generally considered as the paramount factor that determines the user satisfaction with the device QoS and battery life. Different users possess different preferences due to the impact of psychology. Moreover, the surrounding circumstances also significantly change the user's preferences. It is crucial to accurately characterize the preferences of different users at different circumstances, and leverage them to guide the battery life and QoS trade-offs for the user experience enhancement. The project will facilitate the mobile devices to meet the increasing demands on the excellent user experience, and enforce the desire of launching more useful applications into the mobile devices, making the normal living and working more convenient and efficient. This project will also contribute to society through engaging under-represented groups, and collaborating with local industries and Texas Medical Center. The investigator is exploring an innovative research program to characterize the diversity of user preferences depending on personality, emotion, demographics, and perform the preferences-guided energy-performance trade-off in mobile platforms to effectively improve the mobile user experience. This project, which rethinks the mobile platform design from the user perspective, will open the door for next generation mobile platforms that can intelligently, automatically, and human-imperceptibly customize their configurations to satisfy each single user at different circumstances.