The PI's goal in this exploratory research is to seek ways to fundamentally improve the user experience when browsing the Web on mobile handheld devices. Existing approaches to mobile Web adaptation have a number of major problems or limitations. Although no single interface design can address the different needs of individual users, existing adaptation methods typically offer one-size-fits-all solutions. While many contextual factors affect Web navigation on handheld devices, relatively little context data is systematically captured today in real-time and exploited in adaptation. Current techniques do not provide users with cues to help them find information of interest. And almost all existing adaptation solutions do not consider the problem of mobile Web accessibility for disabled users; in particular, there is a paucity of knowledge on how to design and deploy the ability to invoke on a mobile device in a personalized, device-aware manner assistive technologies or special features that may be needed by an individual user. In this project the PI will take the first steps toward development and evaluation of a transformative user-centered, inclusive, and personalized approach to mobile Web adaptation that dynamically adapts the content and display of Web pages based on users' information needs, device characteristics, and accessibility requirements. To these ends, he will focus on users with visual impairments. Specific research questions to be addressed include the following: Can a user-centered approach to mobile Web adaptation better meet the preferences and needs of both typical users and those with visual impairments? Can device-aware mobile Web adaptation better support accessibility? Can we design and build a cloud-based integrative, personalized mobile Web adaptation system that provides ubiquitous access to not only typical users but to users with visual impairments as well? Project outcomes will include design, implementation and evaluation of a prototype cloud-based service that integrates a novel user-centered approach to mobile Web adaptation that enables users to specify and adjust adaptation preferences and strategies, a novel device-aware adaptation that dynamically adapts Web pages based on characteristics of individual mobile devices, and novel personalized adaptation techniques for restructuring Web content so as to provide useful information cues and accessibility.
Broader Impacts: This research will benefit not only researchers in the related fields of computer science and information systems, but also manufacturers and designers of handheld devices as well as individual users. The project will provide unique insights to manufacturers of mobile devices and to mobile application designers on how to achieve user-centered, context-aware adaptive interfaces for handheld devices that improve the user's navigation performance and overall Web browsing experience. It will lay the foundations for a novel personalized adaptation solution that improves mobile Web accessibility, for different user communities. And it will provide technical guidance and empirical evidence on how to reduce the digital divide as it relates to the mobile Web. Project findings will be disseminated through interdisciplinary conferences, workshops and journals, and they will be incorporated into existing graduate and undergraduate courses at UMBC as well as a variety of K-12 outreach programs.
