next up previous
Next: Conclusions Up: GUI design for energy Previous: Do something while waiting

Energy-aware GUI platform and GUI

While energy-efficient GUIs use minimal energy for certain functions, energy-aware GUIs should also be able to trade other aspects of the software for saving energy. As shown in Section V, the display is a large source of energy consumption. Thus, GUI platforms can be augmented to capitalize on new display management technologies [21,3,9]. As some of the insights offered for improving energy efficiency contradict traditional wisdom, energy efficiency may sometimes be improved only with some sacrifice in another area. Not showing progress bars may be somewhat awkward. Inconsistent menus may be slightly confusing. A plain theme may make users unhappy. Therefore, instead of using an energy-efficient GUI all the time, a GUI should be able to adapt to energy availability to make the best tradeoff. Moreover, users should be able to decide whether and when to use the energy-efficient GUI, thus overriding the automatic adaptation.

Lin Zhong 2003-10-13