Guidance-based Power Conservation Framework for User-interface Developers on Mobile Devices

Mobile applications have been seamlessly integrated into our daily lives. When using mobile devices, the energy efficiency of these applications plays a pivotal role in enhancing the user experience. However, it is noteworthy that incorporating power conservation strategies into the toolkit of user-interface (or UI) developers for mobile applications receives almost none research attention. To address the unique requirements for UI developers, this manuscript studies the fusion of power conservation techniques and UI guidance principles to formulate an innovative framework aimed at conserving power consumption within UI. The power conservation framework begins with the extraction of displayed component configuration, drawing from UI previews without depending on any development environment and deployment equipment, during the development phase. Subsequently, we evaluate the UI guidance of the displayed components, taking into consideration the human visual systems. To recommend a power-saving configuration to developers, the final step generates a power-saving configuration that not only curtails power consumption but also preserves the global and local guidance. To validate the efficacy of our framework, we conducted evaluations using eight distinct UI previews, including light and dark modes, on a commercial smart phone. The results obtained from these evaluations are very promising.