The immediate usability of self-explaining interface for mobile users

This paper gives an overview of the existing interactive information systems for mobile users. Based on a study of the general characteristics of mobile information acquisition, the author stresses the necessity to design the self-explaining system which has to balance various design constraints concerning the hardware configuration, the user interface and the content presentation. A number of rules guiding the self-explaining design for the mobile human-machine interaction are outlined according to two essential criteria—the immediate usability and the user adaptation. However, these introduced rules are helpful only so far as to exclude bad designs. For this reason, an outlook is given on future researches that address the issues such as formalization of frequently reoccurring use cases, development of action-driven design solutions and pattern-oriented optimization of human-machine interaction.