Empowerment as a metric for optimization in HCI

Trendafilov, D., Murray-Smith, R. and Polani, D. (2015) Empowerment as a metric for optimization in HCI. In: CHI 2015: Workshop on Principles, Techniques and Perspectives on Optimization and HCI, Seoul, Korea, 19 Apr 2015,

Abstract

We propose a novel metric for optimizing human-computer interfaces, based on the information-theoretic capacity of empowerment, a task-independent universal utility measure. Empowerment measures, for agent-environment systems with stochastic transitions, how much influence, which can be sensed by the agent sensors, an agent has on its environment. It captures the uncertainty in human-machine systems arising from different sources (i.e. noise, delays, errors, etc.) as a single quantity. We suggest the potential empowerment has as an objective optimality criterion in user interface design optimization, contributing to the more solid theoretical foundations of HCI.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Murray-Smith, Professor Roderick
• Authors: Trendafilov, D., Murray-Smith, R., and Polani, D.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2015 The Authors
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher

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