Aesthetics matter: leveraging design heuristics to synthesize visually satisfying handheld interfaces

We present a tool for automatically generating UI layouts for handheld devices based on design principles. This tool introduces a gestalt approach to visual interface design rather, complementing prior work on user cost minimization. We aim to increase user satisfaction using this approach. The tool automatically generates size and position of widgets drawn from the UI design heuristics of simplicity, structuring, and proportion. Simplicity refers to excluding non-core functionality; structuring to contextual grouping, and proportion to best-practice geometric ratios of width, height, and spacing. Layouts are generated from device constraints and simple XML containing UI component hierarchy. These layouts can be directly manipulated using a GUI editor.