UX Heuristics and Checklist for Deep Learning powered Mobile Applications with Image Classification

Advances in mobile applications providing image classification enabled by Deep Learning require innovative User Experience solutions in order to assure their adequate use by users. To aid the design process, usability heuristics are typically customized for a specific kind of application. Therefore, based on a literature review and analyzing existing mobile applications with image classification, we propose an initial set of AIX heuristics for Deep Learning powered mobile applications with image classification decomposed into a checklist. In order to facilitate the usage of the checklist we also developed an online course presenting the concepts and heuristics as well as a web-based tool in order to support an evaluation using these heuristics. These results of this research can be used to guide the design of the interfaces of such applications as well as support the conduction of heuristic evaluations supporting practitioners to develop image classification apps that people can understand, trust, and can engage with effectively.

TMIC: App Inventor Extension for the Deployment of Image Classification Models Exported from Teachable Machine

TMIC is an App Inventor extension for the deployment of ML models for image classification developed with Google Teachable Machine in educational settings. Google Teachable Machine, is an intuitive visual tool that provides workflow-oriented support for the development of ML models for image classification. Aiming at the usage of models developed with Google Teachable Machine, the extension TMIC enables the deployment of the trained models exported as TensorFlow.js to Google Cloud as part of App Inventor, one of the most popular block-based programming environments for teaching computing in K-12. The extension was created with the App Inventor extension framework based on the extension PIC and is available under the BSD 3 license. It can be used for teaching ML in K-12, in introductory courses in higher education or by anyone interested in creating intelligent apps with image classification. The extension TMIC is being developed by the initiative Computa\c{c}\~ao na Escola of the Department of Informatics and Statistics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina/Brazil as part of a research effort aiming at introducing AI education in K-12.

Automatic code generation from sketches of mobile applications in end-user development using Deep Learning

A common need for mobile application development by end-users or in computing education is to transform a sketch of a user interface into wireframe code using App Inventor, a popular block-based programming environment. As this task is challenging and time-consuming, we present the Sketch2aia approach that automates this process. Sketch2aia employs deep learning to detect the most frequent user interface components and their position on a hand-drawn sketch creating an intermediate representation of the user interface and then automatically generates the App Inventor code of the wireframe. The approach achieves an average user interface component classification accuracy of 87,72% and results of a preliminary user evaluation indicate that it generates wireframes that closely mirror the sketches in terms of visual similarity. The approach has been implemented as a web tool and can be used to support the end-user development of mobile applications effectively and efficiently as well as the teaching of user interface design in K-12.