Self Adjustable Graphical User Interface

User interface was always a challenge. For developers - to make sure that all the great features they made are accessible, for users - to figure out what all these buttons, headers, fields, lines and such mean and what to do with them.

In summary:

Self Adjustable Graphical User Interface is an interface, which memorizes user’s actions (clicks, inputs) and reflects them into GUI, emphasizing on the most usable elements or areas. What we see in Web 2.0 world (social driven content, user ratings, wisdom of crowd etc) is in the same lines. By deciding what to click users send a message to other users about importance of certain elements of the interface.

There are almost billion of Internet users and this number is growing. There are more and more users, who doesn’t have computer science background. However, all of them have “human interface” background, which have been developing for centuries. They all know what “self adjustable user interface” is.

What is it?

Let’s start with some example.Let’s say somebody bought (or even made) brand new shovel and started to use it on everyday basis. What will happen to handle of this shovel overtime?It gets polished. In fact, not all the handle gets polished equally, but only where somebody grabbed it. So, what does it mean? Simple: usage of the tool makes its interface personalized. If we translate this statement to computer science language, it would mean each element of the interface should have a memory of each active interaction with user; heavy usage of any element leads to change of such element. What kind of interactions happen with web users? Clicks (touch of the shovel handle), mouse over events (look at the shovel), type in forms (use the shovel).

Let’s consider another example, push buttons. Everybody must seen used keyboards, including push buttons on operator’s keyboards, where among 104 keys only a few of them are being used. Overtime these buttons get polished and surface around them get dirty. This points to simple fact about importance of these buttons.

Why there are 104 equal buttons, if only 3 or 4 are being used on regular basis? It takes certain effort to locate them and accurately press them. Sometimes operator mistakenly presses another button, next to intended one.

Graphical User Interface can do better when it’s self adjustable.

SAGUI can memorize most often used elements and highlight them with

- color;
- size;
- effects (contour, glow, shadow etc).

Now let’s take a look at a hypothetical web site with Self Adjustable GUI implemented. When it’s brand new it would look like this:

When users start hitting it, the elements change according to the most popular choices and offer new users a way to figure out much faster what to do:

So, users were hitting adventure, career, sports and web stuff and they visited mostly “games” and “specials” sections.
It seems, it’s a totally new GUI concept which, I believe, will be widely used in future, a concept of Self Adjustable Graphical User Interface (SAGUI). I haven’t seen this concept explained or used anywhere in industry. Search in Google of “Self Adjustable Graphical User Interface” returns zero results.

I’m not sure about patents and stuff. I think if this concept gets implemented, everybody could benefit.
February 6, 2007, 0:30 am PT.