Abstract: Many daily activities we want to finish as fast and smoothly as possible. The same applies when we use our computing devices. Examples range from low-level actions, such as selecting the “Print” item from the “File” menu or clicking on desktop icons, to higher level activities and more complex tasks, such as finding the favorite holiday photo in the personal collection, or to use a smartphone to navigate a city map or to browse a long list of products before deciding on a purchase. Throughout the years, the desire for interaction efficiency has motivated the Human-Computer Interaction research community to seek and explore new interaction mechanisms and user interface techniques that improve on the state of the art. In this talk I will present a handful of past projects in which we have applied the experimental method to arrive at insights regarding novel user interface design solutions.

CV: David Ahlström received his M.Sc. degree from Stockholm University and his Ph.D. from the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt where he works in the Interactive Systems Group at the Department of Informatics Systems. His research is focused on the design and evaluation of interactive human-computer user interfaces with the aim to improve every day activities of computer use.