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Toward Human-Quantum Computer Interaction: Interface Techniques for Usable Quantum Computing

Hyeok Kim, Mingyoung J. Jeng, Kaitlin N. Smith

TL;DR

Quantum computing promises solutions to classically intractable problems, but broad adoption is hindered by low-level tooling and fragmented documentation. The authors derive design principles (P1–P3) and implement interaction techniques (T0–T4) as high-fidelity, notebook-integrated prototypes that span circuit writing, machine selection, circuit optimization review, and result analysis, enabling mappings to distributions over up to $2^n$ basis states. They validate feasibility with three use cases—learning Shor's algorithm, running quantum machine learning, and exploring optimization strategies—demonstrating practical, problem-specific visualizations and reusable code snippets. The work advances usable QC interfaces and sets a path for standardization and cross-disciplinary collaboration between human-computer interaction and quantum computing.

Abstract

By leveraging quantum-mechanical properties like superposition, entanglement, and interference, quantum computing (QC) offers promising solutions for problems that classical computing has not been able to solve efficiently, such as drug discovery, cryptography, and physical simulation. Unfortunately, adopting QC remains difficult for potential users like QC beginners and application-specific domain experts, due to limited theoretical and practical knowledge, the lack of integrated interface-wise support, and poor documentation. For example, to use quantum computers, one has to convert conceptual logic into low-level codes, analyze quantum program results, and share programs and results. To support the wider adoption of QC, we, as designers and QC experts, propose interaction techniques for QC through design iterations. These techniques include writing quantum codes conceptually, comparing initial quantum programs with optimized programs, sharing quantum program results, and exploring quantum machines. We demonstrate the feasibility and utility of these techniques via use cases with high-fidelity prototypes.

Toward Human-Quantum Computer Interaction: Interface Techniques for Usable Quantum Computing

TL;DR

Quantum computing promises solutions to classically intractable problems, but broad adoption is hindered by low-level tooling and fragmented documentation. The authors derive design principles (P1–P3) and implement interaction techniques (T0–T4) as high-fidelity, notebook-integrated prototypes that span circuit writing, machine selection, circuit optimization review, and result analysis, enabling mappings to distributions over up to basis states. They validate feasibility with three use cases—learning Shor's algorithm, running quantum machine learning, and exploring optimization strategies—demonstrating practical, problem-specific visualizations and reusable code snippets. The work advances usable QC interfaces and sets a path for standardization and cross-disciplinary collaboration between human-computer interaction and quantum computing.

Abstract

By leveraging quantum-mechanical properties like superposition, entanglement, and interference, quantum computing (QC) offers promising solutions for problems that classical computing has not been able to solve efficiently, such as drug discovery, cryptography, and physical simulation. Unfortunately, adopting QC remains difficult for potential users like QC beginners and application-specific domain experts, due to limited theoretical and practical knowledge, the lack of integrated interface-wise support, and poor documentation. For example, to use quantum computers, one has to convert conceptual logic into low-level codes, analyze quantum program results, and share programs and results. To support the wider adoption of QC, we, as designers and QC experts, propose interaction techniques for QC through design iterations. These techniques include writing quantum codes conceptually, comparing initial quantum programs with optimized programs, sharing quantum program results, and exploring quantum machines. We demonstrate the feasibility and utility of these techniques via use cases with high-fidelity prototypes.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 30 sections, 11 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background: Hello Quantum World
  3. Quantum Computing in a Nut Shell
  4. Quantum Computing Practices
  5. A Survey of Quantum Computing Tools
  6. Related Work
  7. Interfaces for Quantum Computing
  8. Interface Support for Data-intensive Work
  9. Design Iterations
  10. Methods Overview
  11. Identified Challenges
  12. Design Principles for QC Interfaces
  13. Interface Techniques for Usable QC
  14. Overall Interface Techniques
  15. Techniques for Circuit Composition
  16. ...and 15 more sections

Figures (11)

  • Figure 1: (A) Diagrams for quantum mechanical properties. (B) Example quantum gates. (C) An example quantum circuit that generates a Bell state or quantum entanglement using Hadamard and C-NOT gates on two qubits. Bra ($\langle{}|$) and ket ($|{}\rangle$) are a notation for representing quantum states.
  • Figure 2: Visualizations offered by QC tools. (A) The interactive whiteboard of Classiq classiq (B) Bloch sphere. (C) Qiskit's machine status dashboard qiskit (D) Measurement histogram.
  • Figure 3: An overview of our interaction techniques for usable QC interface.
  • Figure 4: Problem-specific visualizations for (A) natural number, (B) truth table, (C) image, and (D) contingency table.
  • Figure 5: The hypothetical error adjustment technique shows when counts are reliable (A), less reliable (B), and in need of more shots (C).
  • ...and 6 more figures