Introduction to HCI Research Ubiquitous Computing

1
Introduction to HCI Research / Ubiquitous
Computing
2
Objectives for today

• Get an overview of HCI research
• History and how we got where we are today
• Look at one research area in some detail
  ubiquitous computing

3
Deliverables for next week

• Walkthrough evaluation report
• Perform the walkthrough for each of the 3
  scenarios you submitted this week.
• At each step/action in the scenario, answer the
  five questions (41).
• For 2 of the 3 scenarios, you should turn in a
  log of your answers to each question. (You may
  use ABA-() when there is CRYSTAL CLEAR
  repetition.
• Write up a list of interface problems discovered
  during the walkthrough
• Add brief notes about how you discovered them
• Any questions?

4
Assorted Notes

• GOMS Goals-Operators-Methods-Selection rules.
• Goals define the desired state (ie, compose an
  email).
• Operators are the actions that can be used to
  achieve that state (ie, perceive a light, touch a
  key).
• Methods are the procedural know-how that the
  person has going into a task (ie, how to select a
  choice from a pull-down menu).
• Selection rules decide the direction of action
  (IF I am finished, THEN hit the send key, ELSE
  continue typing.)
• (Credit to Zaki for pointing me to a website that
  actually contained this information.)

5
Assorted Notes

• Minor schedule modifications will be posted to
  the course website.
• Oops, I left off the Spolsky readings from my
  original schedule.
• Adjust a few deliverable dates

6
Where is todays topic coming from??

• Todays Topic(s)
• HCI
• Ubiquitous computing
• My goal is that you learn a little more than JUST
  design.
• You should learn a little more about the field
  that has created/influenced these design
  processes.

7
The Reality of UI Design

• For the most part, outdated processes are still
  followed
• Waterfall model
• Unproductive divisions still common
• User-centered design often ignored
• Punish the user
• Politics a big issue
• Management must believe in user-centered design,
  or it wont happen
• Even if there are clear usability disasters

8
More reality

• LoFi prototyping methods do work
• The advantages weve discussed really are
  apparent
• Again, the trick is to get engineers to accept
  them
• Designers must be able to make their case
• Methods to reach decisions, not just argue based
  on personal opinions and taste

9
Why UI design needs HCI research

• How to gather data to reach decisions / select
  among alternatives
• How to analyze and interpret data
• Awareness of whats been tried, what works, and
  what doesnt gives you a big advantage in
  designing new features for your product

10
HCI Research

• Invents new technologies, techniques, and methods
  for creating, implementing, and evaluating
  interactive systems and devices
• Creates novel applications of new technologies
  and techniques subjects them to rigorous
  evaluation
• Studies peoples individual and group behavior in
  relevant contexts

11
HCI History
12
Vannevar Bush As We May
Think (1945)

• Visionary paper that introduced many of the
  themes that have preoccupied the field of HCI
• The goal was to make information more accessible,
  specifically to educated professionals
• http//www.theatlantic.com/unbound/
  flashbks/computer/bushf.htm

13
The Memex (Memory Extender)

• Based on technologies available in 1945
• A personal extensible microfilm library
• Users can add pictures, annotations etc into the
  library
• User can build a trail by associating documents
• Trails can be shared

14
More on the technology he envisioned using

• Mini camera (image capture)
• Microfilm (storage technology)
• Dry photography (printing technology)
• Vocoder running stenotype
• Advance arithmetical computational device
• Note this was the infancy of the digital
  computer, and he did not consider it

15
Significance to HCI

• A compelling and profound vision using
  technology to augment human capabilities to
  structuring and retrieving information.
• Inspired all the seminal systems in the field
• Ivan Sutherland (SketchPad)
• Douglas Engelbart (NLS)
• Ted Nelson (Hypertext)
• Alan Kay (The Reactive Engine)
• Again gained currency in the 1990s
• Social navigation

16
Sketchpad

• Ivan Sutherland, 1963
• Display and manipulation of graphical objects
• Operations grab, move, resize,
• Enabled by hardware developments
• low-cost graphics terminals
• input devices such as light pens and data tablets
  
• display processors capable of real-time
  manipulation of images

17
Douglas Engelbart

• The Problem (early 50s)
• ...The world is getting more complex, and
  problems are getting more urgent. These must be
  dealt with collectively. However, human abilities
  to deal collectively with complex / urgent
  problems are not increasing as fast as these
  problems.
• If you could do something to improve human
  capability to deal with these problems, then
  you'd really contribute something basic.

18
Douglas Engelbart

• The Vision (Early 50s)
• I had the image of sitting at a big CRT screen
  with all kinds of symbols, new and different
  symbols, not restricted to our old ones. The
  computer could be manipulated, and you could be
  operating. all kinds of things to drive the
  computer

19
Douglas Engelbart

• ... I also had a clear picture that one's
  colleagues could be sitting in other rooms with
  similar work stations, tied to the same computer
  complex, and could be sharing and working and
  collaborating very closely. And also the
  assumption that there'd be a lot of new skills,
  new ways of thinking that would evolve."
• ...Doug Engelbart

20
AFIP Fall Joint Conference, 1968

• NLS system
• Document Processing
• modern word processing
• outline processing
• hypermedia
• Input / Output
• the mouse and one-handed chorded keyboard
• high resolution displays
• multiple windows
• specially designed furniture

21
Engelbarts workstation
22
Engelbarts mouse, 1964
23
Engelbarts vision

• Shared work
• shared files and personal annotations
• electronic messaging
• shared displays with multiple pointers
• audio/video conferencing
• ideas of an Internet

24
Alan Kays Vision of a Personal Computer 1969

• Dynabook vision (and cardboard prototype) of a
  notebook computer
• Imagine having your own self-contained
  knowledge manipulator in a portable package the
  size and shape of an ordinary notebook. Suppose
  it had enough power to out-race your senses of
  sight and hearing, enough capacity to store for
  later retrieval thousands of page-equivalents of
  reference materials, poems, letters, recipes,
  records, drawings, animations, musical scores...

25
Anyone know what the first desktop environment
was?
26
Anyone know what the first desktop environment
was?

• Xerox PARC
• Alto mid 1970s
• Star 1981

27
Desktop Metaphor

• File Cabinet The Hard Drive
• The hard drive (and other kinds of storage
  media like floppy disks) store files and folder.
• Folders Folders
• Folders (also known as directories or
  sub-directories) allow you to organized files and
  other folders.

28
Desktop Metaphor

• Documents Documents
• These are files you create and edit.
• Trash or Recycle Bin Trash
• This is where you put files and folders that
  you want to delete or get rid of.

29
Xerox Star Hardware
30
Keyboard Mouse
31
Display
32
Significance

• A commercial machine that incorporated features
  that defined the PC for the next 20 years
• Direct manipulation
• Desktop metaphor the very idea of using a
  metaphor
• WYSIWYG
• Icons
• Dialog boxes
• Windows
• Mouse
• Bitmapped displays
• Local hard disk
• Network connectivity

33
The Star was the first machine based on usability
engineering

• inspired design
• extensive paper prototyping and usage analysis
• usability testing with potential users
• iterative refinement of interface

34
But most of you have never heard of this!

• But a commercial failure
• cost (15,000) - IBM had just announced a less
  expensive machine
• limited functionality, e.g., no spreadsheet
• closed architecture 3rd party vendors could not
  add applications
• perceived as slow
• over reliance on direct manipulation

35
Significance

• Steve Jobs, Apple Co-founder
• "And they showed me really three things. But I
  was so blinded by the first one I didn't even
  really see the other two. One of the things they
  showed me was object orienting programming they
  showed me that but I didn't even see that. The
  other one they showed me was a networked computer
  system...they had over a hundred Alto computers
  all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't
  even see that.

36
Significance

• I was so blinded by the first thing they
  showed me which was the graphical user interface.
  I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in
  my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we
  saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things
  wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but
  still though they had the germ of the idea was
  there and they'd done it very well and within you
  know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all
  computers would work like this some day."

37
Commercial Success Apple

• Apple Lisa (1983)
• based upon many ideas in the Star
• predecessor of Macintosh
• somewhat cheaper (10,000)
• commercial failure as well
• Apple Macintosh (1984)
• old ideas but well done!

38
Why did the Mac succeed?

• aggressive pricing (2500)
• did not need to blaze a trail
• learnt from mistakes of Lisa and corrected them
  ideas now mature
• market now ready
• developers toolkit encouraged 3rd party
  non-Apple software
• interface guidelines encouraged consistency
  between applications
• domination in desktop publishing because of
  affordable laser printer and excellent graphics

39
A newer vision

• Ubiquitous computing

40
Mark Weiser

• people live through their practices and tacit
  knowledge so that the most powerful things are
  those that are effectively invisible in use. This
  is a challenge that affects all of computer
  science. Our preliminary approach Activate the
  world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing
  devices per person per office, of all scales
  (from 1" displays to wall sized). We call our
  work "ubiquitous computing". It is invisible,
  everywhere computing that does not live on a
  personal device of any sort, but is in the
  woodwork everywhere.

• For thirty years most interface design, and most
  computer design, has been headed down the path of
  the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to
  make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so
  interesting, that we never want to be without it.
  A less-traveled path I call the "invisible" its
  highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded,
  so fitting, so natural, that we use it without
  even thinking about it.

41
Put it another way

• Merge the physical and
• digital realms

42
Issues and themes

• Range of form factors
• Tab (Tiny)
• Pad (notebook PC sized)
• Wall-sized
• Location-aware
• Mobile
• Wireless networking
• Sensors
• Power consumption

43
Central technologies/applications

• Active badges
• Placing information in the world
• Smart environments
• Smart objects
• Novel small devices
• Location technologies
• Communication technologies

44
Active Badge

• Lets someone be located within a building
• Badges emit IR signals
• Sensors in the environment pick up the signals,
  pass them to a central network

45
Olivetti Active Badge, circa 1990
46
Placing Information in the World

• GeoNotes
• Associate notes (e.g., recommendations, ratings)
  with locations for personal or group use
• E-Graffiti
• Campus system which associates notes with
  location
• comMotion
• Associates to do list items with locations
  individual use
• ActiveCampus
• Big ongoing effort at UCSD expanding to other
  sites

47
GeoNotes

• Permissions
• Filtering

48
Smart objects

• Digital paper
• Bar codes
• Computer vision

49
Digital Paper

• Take a special pen and a special Post-it note.
  Write a message, enter an e-mail address in some
  squares at the bottom of the note, and check a
  box marked "e-mail" and another marked "send."
• The pen has a pressure sensor, which activates a
  digital camera that records exact strokes.
  Bluetooth transceiver communicates the strokes to
  a phone or laptop nearby.
• The special pen isn't taking pictures of the pen
  marks -- it's recording the position of the pen
  on the paper. It can do this because the paper is
  preprinted with thousands of tiny, nearly
  invisible dots. They make up a kind of map on the
  Post-it note that the pen's camera can read. So,
  for instance, when you check the box marked
  "e-mail," it knows that that part of the map
  means "Send what you've captured as an e-mail
  message." Only the e-mail address needs to be
  written neatly, in designated squares for each
  letter, so it can be read and translated by
  optical character recognition software in the pen.

50
AURA

• Scans the bar code on any object with a wireless
  PocketPC
• Construct queries ? obtain product info
• Build personal histories (that can be shared,
  too)  

51
AURA
52
Next Steps

• Project
• Cognitive walkthroughs due
• Begin work on running prototype
• Next class
• Heuristic evaluation