# Design and Applications of GLANCE: GLanceable Alarm Notification for a User Centered Experience
## 4 Results of the 2 nd Macro-Phase: Application and Refinement of GLANCE
### Application to a Personal Customizable Notifier
_At the end of each round_, participants were asked to answer a questionnaire including three sections: Questions about details of the read text, questions about details of the information notified by the GLANCE+ display, and questions about features of the category bar. Furthermore, _at the end of the entire session_, users were asked to subjectively evaluate which alternative they judged as the most intuitive. ResultsAs to the _recall of text details and notification details_ we expected and indeed achieved a confirmation of results obtained for the previous prototype. It is worth observing that, for both the foreground and background task, in the first administered round the users' recall performances results were slightly lower than the recall performances of the participants in the previous test (the correctness rate was 91% for the read text and 52% for lower-to-medium severity notifications), while equalizing them in the successive rounds. As reported also by the observers, in this case users required more time to become familiar with display features and behavior but, as the results of successive rounds shows, the system was quickly learned. Once the users had learned the display, their recall performances improved to match the glanceability of the previous version of the display (actually, the administration of several rounds to each user allowed us to get an indication on the learnability of the display). We also observed that in this case information about critical notifications was always correctly recalled, as was in the first rounds. As in the previous test, as to recall performances we did not detect statistical differences based on age or on computer experiences. As to the specific evaluation of the category bar, one of the novelties to be validated was the use of a _combination of status sensitive icon and numeric label_ to indicate the number of  
Figure 11: Four alternatives for the display: (**a**) A first type of tab-based category bar with horizontal scrolling of individual notifications; (**b**) a second type of tab-based category bar with horizontal scrolling of individual notifications; (**c**) lens-based category bar with horizontal scrolling of individual notifications; (**d**) lens-based category bar with vertical scrolling of individual notifications. incoming notifications for a given category: 60% of the users understood that the category icon changed based on the number of notifications, 70% of the users understood the meaning of the numeric label, and all users recognized at least one of the two visual hints as indication of the number of incoming notifications for the category. This confirms the appropriateness of relying on a combination of icon and numeric label. The other aspect to be validated was the _visual hint used to indicate the current category_ (tab metaphor vs. lens metaphor). As to the selection of the best solution, this was based on both objective criteria, with respect to users' ability to digest a set of categories organized as a scrollable list, and subjective criteria (i.e., users' preferences). From the results of the third section of the questionnaire, it emerged that most users did not understand that in the tabbed solutions of Figure 11a,b the category list was a scrollable list (probably because of the familiarity with unsrollable tabbed displays), while the same problem was neglectable in the third and fourth options of Figure 11 (differing only in the scrolling direction of individual notifications within the detailed component of a single category), which had also better performances in regards to the recall of notifications with medium-to-high severity and to the recall of categories overview. Among these two candidates, the organization subjectively preferred by users was the one in Figure 11d, characterized by:  
* Alens in a fixed central position of the category bar,
* The category list scrolling from right to left, and
* The notification descriptions scrolling from bottom to top.