OwnTime Background Information,
by Roy Rodenstein, February 1998
Introduction:
When someone in a remote location calls you and you're unable to pick up
the phone, what do they do? Leave a message. What about when someone is
physically present at your office, but you are busy and cannot meet with
them at the moment they are there? There is no established way of
proceeding in such a situation, no standard technological or social
solution. Certainly, interrupting you in your office is unacceptable,
but sending e-mail will not immediately convey the fact that you are
present, that unlike most e-mail this one should convey colocated and
synchronous space-time rather than to remote and asynchronous space-time.
I am working on using augmentation, such as via transparent displays
driven by wearable computers, to smooth human-human interaction in these
situations. For example, semi-transparent visuals could be displayed to
the user when they are busy but someone approaches their office door.
Such visuals could initially be mostly transparent and abstract, such as
a simple figure indicating presence, and could become more detailed
information at the user's request, such as the name of the visitor and
an estimate of how long they can wait to see you and how important or
urgent their business is. This transition to greater levels of detail
can be implemented as a simple mouse click at the time when the
visitor's presence is announced, so that no complex interaction is
required and attention can be almost fully maintained on the current
conversation or work being performed, and the mental context of the
current activity is not lost. Exploiting the visualization axes of
transparency, color, size and motion, various applications of these
techniques are possible. For example, a system could interact with your
calendar to let visitors know how long you are likely to be busy. It
could also use your to-do list to display important deadlines that grow in
graphical prominence when good opportunities arise for them to be done.
Differentiation from existing work:
- Previous work in visualizing human activity for awareness has usually
occurred either when the user reqests a snapshot, or simply continually.
This work is closer to the continuous model, but remains out of the
user's way until interesting events occur.
- Because this system is implemented with heads-up displays and
wearable computers in mind, it can be used not only when one is in front
of a desktop computer but all the time. For example, important e-mail or
talk requests can trigger similar 'visitor' cues to indicate that
communication may be desired. GPS can allow the office scenario of
physical proximity to be realized out of the office as well.
- This system enhances personal productivity, and does not require
remote workgroups to be applicable or effective.
- While most current work uses audio or solid graphics for awareness,
this system uses transparent graphical overlays and is closer to
augmented reality in nature.
- A simple interaction mechanism, such as a mouse click, is used to
allow the user to control the amount of information provided for each
event, so that events the user is not interested in can be disregarded
with no loss of attention- most current systems use motion extensively,
and so can draw the user's attention even for unimportant events.
- Although the system can be enhanced through use of cameras or
microphones, these are not required for normal use, so many difficult
privacy and capture issues are avoided.
Research questions:
- How useful, compared to the technical complexities and potential
requirements for wires, would tracking information be? Perhaps we can
display visitor events only when the user glances toward the door, so
that the normal way of checking for visitors is preserved, but what
happens if we don't look at the right moment when an important visitor
is around, or if we are simply facing away from the door and thus do not
have simple opportunity to look in its direction? Perhaps assuming no
tracking, and simply making the cues very subtle and allowing the user
to request greater detail, is best.
- Several properties, such as size and transparency, can be used to
make graphical items more or less prominent. Which properties among
those, as well as motion, color and shape are most effective
for peripheral display?
- How many levels of detail should there be, and at what point should
information switch from iconographic to textual media?
- What is the best interaction to use to allow the user to request
more detail for an event? A single mouse click? Any keypress? Single,
double, and triple-clicks, perhaps allowing for a large pause between clicks?
Related work:
Harrison, Beverly L., Ishii, H., Vicente, Kim J., Buxton, W. A. S.
Transparent Layered User Interfaces: An Evaluation of a Display Design to
Enhance Focused and Divided Attention.
In Proc. CHI '95. ACM, 1995.
http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/papers/blh_bdy.htm
Hudson, Scott E. and Smith, I.
Electronic Mail Previews Using Nonspeech Audio.
In Proc. CHI '96. ACM, 1996.
http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/shortpap/Hudson/hs_txt.htm
Mynatt, Elizabeth D., Back, M., Want, R., Baer, M., and Ellis, Jason B.
Designing Audio Aura.
In Proc. CHI '98. ACM, 1998
http://c2000.gatech.edu/jellis/aa-chi.ps
Pedersen, E.R. and Sokoler, T.
AROMA: Abstract Representation Of presence supporting Mutual Awareness.
In Proc. CHI'97. ACM, 1997.
http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chi97/proceedings/paper/erp.htm
Pedersen, E.R. and Sokoler, T.
Awareness Technology: Experiments with Abstract Representation.
http://www.aroma.ruc.dk/HCIelectronic
Weiser, M., Brown, J. S.
Designing Calm Technology
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/calmtech/calmtech.htm
Weiser, M.
The Computer for the Twenty-First Century.
In Scientific American, 10, 1991.
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html
Yamaashi, K., Cooperstock, Jeremy R., Narine, T., Buxton, W.
Beating the Limitations of Camera-Monitor Mediated Telepresence with
Extra Eyes.
In Proc. CHI '96. ACM, 1996.
http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/papers/Yamaashi/ky_txt.htm