UX-Painter: An approach to explore interaction fixes in the browser

Abstract

Usability and user interaction improvement is a central task in web development to guarantee the success of a web application. However, designers are barely able to keep up with the current development cycle because their practices are too costly, while interaction issues accumulate in applications that end-users keep suffering. In this work, we propose a method for designers to rapidly explore solutions through visual programming to the interaction problems of an application under development, even when it has been already deployed. The method is realized by a tool called UX-Painter, an exploratory tool for designers to apply quick fixes to interaction issues at the client-side of a web application without the need of any script programming knowledge. The palette of available fixes in UX-Painter are client-side web refactorings, i.e., changes to web page elements that solve specific user interaction problems without changing the underlying functionality. UX-Painter allows designers to quickly set up new versions of a web application by combining refactorings to create alternative designs for user testing or an inspection review. UX-Painter also provides the means to communicate design improvements, as a sequence of refactorings with clear semantics. We show the feedback provided by interviews with designers about UX-Painter's functionality and the results of a user test about its usability.