Weekly Discussion Group on Future Computing Environments

Winter Quarter 1997

CS 8011D

Alternative User Interfaces

Time and Place: Mondays 4:30-6:00pm, Room 102, College of Computing

Moderators

Gregory Abowd (abowd@cc.gatech.edu)
Chris Atkeson (cga@cc.gatech.edu)

General information

Current week

Previous quarters

The general focus this quarter is on alternative user interfaces. By alternative, we mean any interface that moves away from the now traditional GUI desktop with keyboard/mouse for input and graphic display as output.

Possible topics to cover this quarter are:

multimodal interfaces
voice/speech
immersive environments
agents
personal vision systems
nanotechnology
the home as a user interface
...

Schedule

1/13

Introduction
Gregory Abowd

Papers/Pointers

Blair MacIntyre and Steven Feiner, Future Multimedia User Interfaces. Multimedia Systems 4(5):250-268, 1996.

On-line meeting notes

1/20

No meeting (Martin Luther King holiday)

1/27

The Limits of Direct Manipulation
Jen Mankoff
(jmankoff@cc.gatech.edu)

In order to discuss the limits of DM, we need to define it (Hutchin's paper helps with this) and to think about other types of interfaces with which we can compare it. Try to come up with one example of a non-direct manipulation interface, and compare it's abilities and limits to those of DM interfaces.

From the readings, please pay special attention to Hutchin's discussion of problems with Direct Manipulation (starts p. 336). I also found the violin-piano example on p. 328 to be interesting. In the Bowman & Hodges paper, think about the needs (and limitations) of 3D and VR interfaces with respect to direct manipulation. The Neurosurgical Planning paper is a good "story" paper for direct manipulation.

They are be available for photocopying in my office.

"Assigned" Papers (Bibliography)

Hutchins, E., Hollan, J., and Norman, D. "Direct Manipulation Interfaces." in User Centered System Design, D. Norman and S. Draper, eds., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 1986, pp. 87-124.
Bowman, D. and Hodges, L. "An Evaluation of Techniques for Grabbing and Manipulating Remote Objects in Immersive Virtual Environments." to appear in Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, 1997.
Goble, J., Hinckley, K., Pausch, R., Snell, J., and Kassell, N. "Two-Handed Spatial Interface Tools for Neurosurgical Planning." IEEE Computer, vol. 28, no. 7, July 1995, pp. 20-26.

Pointers to other interesting material A related paper about "Culture & Convention in Multimedia Interface Design" Pausch, R. and Burnette, T. "Navigation and Locomotion in Virtual Worlds via Flight into Hand-Held Miniatures", SIGGRAPH '95 Schneiderman, B. "Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages" Excerpted from IEEE Computer, August 1983, New York: IEEE Computer Society Some readings suggested by Doug Bowman

2/3

2-D interfaces are not a done deal
Ian Smith

In reading these papers, keep in mind the notion of a "view" in the interface. In the case of paper 1 there are lots of views presented by the lenses. In the second paper, he talks about the different "views" that the different card players need in the gin example. Finally, in the last paper there are many smaller views of the main view. Note that in all of these papers, the "view" is not a dead bunch of bits (a picture), but an interactive component/system in its own right.

Papers/Pointers

Toolglass and Magic Lenses
Comparing The Programming Demans Of Single-User and Multi-User Applications
A History-Based Macro By Example System (its deja vu all over again...)
Bonus paper:Edwards and Mynatt CHI'97 paper on lenses.

2/10

Agents
Gary Boone

For this discussion of Agents, let's focus our discussion on three articles from last December's IEEE Expert: Intelligent Systems & Their Applications Special Issue on Intelligent Agents. These articles were chosen for the following reason: The first paper captures the hype and demand for agents. The second is a reasonable critique of the approach. The third offers a number of definitions and techniques. Do these papers all agree about what an agent is? Is 'agent' well-defined technically, or just another Holy Grail?

Papers/Pointers (all from IEEE Expert: Intelligent Systems & Their Applications Special Issue on Intelligent Agents, Volume 1, Number 6. Published by the IEEE Computer Society.)

Sara Hedberg. Agents for Sale: First Wave of Intelligent Agents Go Commercial, pp. 16--19.
Charles Petrie. Agent-based Engineering, the Web, and Intelligence, pp. 24--29.
Katia Sycara, Keith Decker, Anandeep Pannu, Mike Williamson, and Dajun Zeng. Distributed Intelligent Agents, pp. 36--45.

Notes on discussion

2/17

Alternative interfaces to the home
Jonathan Somers

The topic for this meeting is intelligent building design issues, with emphasis on the HCI issues of interacting with a smart building. (This may not be apparent from the readings.) We'll discuss many issues, such as voice/telephony interfaces, but the main points are the problem of minimizing surface area between user and computer - a.k.a less HCI is better HCI - and the use of natural affordances in HCI design, or designing into the environment rather than changing the env to suit the design.

Papers/Pointers

The Neural Network House
Michael Mozer et al. of the University of Colorado at Boulder are developing a house which uses a neural network strategy. Their current focus is on energy conservation and so their system is presently very unidirectional, computers taking cues from users but not vice versa. Several techniques used by Mozer's team lend themselves to self-learning systems and to widely-distributed systems - both key points I will draw on.
Scott Elrod paper on responsive environments in Communications of the ACM, July 1993.
Scott touches on privacy and security issues, but a major point here is the importance of passivity in design - i.e. the user shouldn't have to explicitly supply information that the computer can get for itself through remote sensing and the like. Elrod also cites a paper by Loveday, "Artificial Intelligence for Buildings", published in Applied Energy in 1992 - but this deals almost exclusively with energy management, and has little relevance to our discussions this quarter.
Autonomous computing
NASA/Ames has done a great deal of autonomous computing work which has applicability to intelligent buildings. They introduce the concept of an "immobot", or immobile robot - i.e. one with many sensors and the ability to control its "private" world, but with little ability to move around or interact with the outside world. (Deep space probes, while among the fastest moving objects in the solar system, are essentially predestined and watch the universe go by with little control over their path. Their manipulators are limited to their own extent. Buildings are much the same in the latter regard.)
This week's discussion leader invites you to explore his own Web site for an overview of his house, as well as other hotlinks of interest. After the day's seminar, we will venture out to see Jonathan's house in person (food included).
Meeting notes

2/24

Privacy issues
Joe Bayes

We've been sidestepping this issue too much. Does ubiquitous computing mean ubiquitous intrusion? The paper for this monday is "Architectural Considerations for Scalable, Secure, Mobile Computing with Location Information" by Mike Spreitzer and Marvin Theimer. Copies are available outside Gregory's door. I'm also going to put a few copies of a blurb that Richard Stallman wrote in this month's CACM, "The Right to Read". It doesn't entirely pertain to privacy, but is short and kinda interesting anyway. Also, if you want, you can check out .

Papers/Pointers

Mike Spreitzer and Marvin Theimer. Architectural Considerations for Scalable, Secure, Mobile Computing with Location Information. 1994 IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Posman, Poland, 21-24 June 1994, pp. 29-38.
A discussion of how to build in privacy concerns from the beginning.
Richard Stallman. The Right to Read. Communications of the ACM. 40(2):??, February 1997.
When copyright goes awry.
Ann CavoukianGo Beyond Security -- Build in Privacy: One Does not Equal the OtherPresented at the ARDTECH/SECURTECH'96 CONFERENCE, Atlanta, Georgia, May 14-16, 1996.

3/3

Video conferencing
Rob Orr

This week, we will talk about videoconferencing, esp. in the context of design and collaboration. As most of you know, the College will be splitting into three locations come end of Spring quarter (actually, we've already split into two locations). Hopefully, these papers will give us a little insight into the usefulness of having video walls in each of the three locations and guide us in how to best use them.

Papers/Pointers

"Experimental Uses of Video to Support Design Activities", Robert Shults, Xerox PARC.
Evan Rosen. Pesonal Videoconferencing, 1996. On-line version.
Videoconferencing resources.

3/10

Non-traditional 2D interfaces - Lenses
Roy Rodenstein

Papers/Pointers

George Robertson and Jock D. Mackinlay. The Document Lens. In the Proceedings of UIST'93, November, 1993, pages 101-108.
Scott Hudson and Roy Rodenstein. Debugging Lenses: A New Class of Transparent Tools for User Interface Debugging. Draft to be submitted to UIST'97, March, 1997.

General Information

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