Application of Object-Based Metrics for Recognition of Well-Designed Dashboards

ABSTRACT

Measuring the characteristics of visually emphasized objects displayed on a screen seems to be a promising way to rate user interface quality. On the other hand, it brings us problems regarding the ambiguity of object recognition caused by the subjective perception of the users. The goal of this research is to analyze the applicability of chosen object-based metrics for the evaluation of dashboard quality and the ability to distinguish well-design samples, with the focus on the subjective perception of the users. This article presents the model for the rating and classification of object-based metrics according to their ability to objectively distinguish well-designed dashboards. We use the model to rate 13 existing object-based metrics of aesthetics. Then, we present a new approach for the improvement of the rating of one object-based metric—Balance. We base the improvement on the combination of the object-based metric with the pixel-based analysis of color distribution on the screen.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports from the National Programme of Sustainability (NPU II) project ‘IT4Innovations excellence in science – LQ1602ʹ.

Notes

1. Available at: http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~ihynek/dashboards/ijhci-2018.

2. For instance, we need to consider that the group of randomly chosen dashboards might also contain well-designed dashboards, which might increase the value of ${\gamma }_m$.

3. Highly colorful values are $>2$.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jiří Hynek

Jiří Hynek is a student in a Ph.D. degree program at the Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Information Technology. He focuses on issues connected with the evaluation of user interface quality.

Tomáš Hruška

Tomáš Hruška is a graduate of the Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic. Prof. Hruška received his CSc. (Ph.D.) in Computer Science and Engineering from the Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic. He has worked in the field of Information Systems and Visualisation.