Skillometers: Reflective Widgets that Motivate and Help Users to Improve Performance

Figure 1. Three snapshots of a skillometer designed to encourage hotkey use. At first (left), the user mostly relies on mouse selections for activating commands. The skillometer indicates that he could save time by using hotkeys, and displays the appropriate hotkey bindings. As he begins to increase his hotkey use (center), the skillometer shows the benefits of the switch, encouraging him to use more hotkeys (right). Applications typically provide ways for expert users to in-crease their performance, such as keyboard shortcuts or cus-tomization, but these facilities are frequently ignored. To help address this problem, we introduce skillometers – lightweight displays that visualize the benefits available through practic-ing, adopting a better technique, or switching to a faster mode of interaction. We present a general framework for skillome-ter design, then discuss the design and implementation of a real-world skillometer intended to increase hotkey use. A controlled experiment shows that our skillometer successfully encourages earlier and faster learning of hotkeys. Finally, we discuss general lessons for future development and deploy-ment of skillometers. Author Keywords Expertise; hotkeys; learning; reflection