AdaM: Adapting Multi-User Interfaces for Collaborative Environments in Real-Time
This addresses the challenge of creating adaptive cross-device interfaces for collaborative settings, offering a scalable solution over manual methods, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing optimization techniques.
The paper tackled the problem of distributing multi-user interfaces in collaborative environments by formulating it as an assignment problem and solving it with combinatorial optimization, resulting in a real-time tool that optimizes UI allocation based on device capabilities, user roles, preferences, and access rights, and was compared to traditional paper prototyping in a lab study.
Developing cross-device multi-user interfaces (UIs) is a challenging problem. There are numerous ways in which content and interactivity can be distributed. However, good solutions must consider multiple users, their roles, their preferences and access rights, as well as device capabilities. Manual and rule-based solutions are tedious to create and do not scale to larger problems nor do they adapt to dynamic changes, such as users leaving or joining an activity. In this paper, we cast the problem of UI distribution as an assignment problem and propose to solve it using combinatorial optimization. We present a mixed integer programming formulation which allows real-time applications in dynamically changing collaborative settings. It optimizes the allocation of UI elements based on device capabilities, user roles, preferences, and access rights. We present a proof-of-concept designer-in-the-loop tool, allowing for quick solution exploration. Finally, we compare our approach to traditional paper prototyping in a lab study.