Paper Reading #29: The Why UI: Using Goal Networks to Improve User Interfaces

Reference Information:

Title: The Why UI: Using Goal Networks to Improve User Interfaces

Authors: Dustin Smith, Henry Lieberman

Venue: IUI 2010, Hong Kong, China

Comments:
Comment 1
Comment 2

Summary:
This paper discusses the idea that every user has a set of goals in mind and how software should be able to help with these goals. Using voice recognition the system takes in a goal and finds the sub-goals. Because there are many sub-goals for many things the system takes in some a couple of details about the goal from the user.

The idea was to have the user state a goal and have the system guide them through steps to achieve this goal. An example used in the paper was to have somebody that wanted to buy a house. The system then listed sub-goals such as details and locations local realtors from whom they could buy a house from. The authors just wanted to show how this type of idea can be implemented to greatly improve user experience with software.

Discussion:
I thought it was interesting how they showed an implimentation example but overal they just wanted to show that the idea could be useful. I think in many interfaces this kind of idea would be very useful. When I have problems with software I usually do not goto the 'help' section because often times I get more confused or find too much information to process. I think having sometihng that could help aid in these types of actions would be nice to deal with.