Transcript ppt - Jeffrey Nichols

Generating Consistent Interfaces
for Appliances
Jeffrey Nichols
Second Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User Interfaces (M3UI)
Intelligent User Interfaces Conference
January 9, 2005
Problem
Appliances are complex and often hard to use!
User interfaces are idiosyncratic!
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Personal Universal Controller
Use mobile devices to control all appliances in the environment
Specifications
Control
Feedback
Appliances
Mobile Devices
Key Features
Two-way communication, Abstract Descriptions, Multiple Platforms,
Automatic Interface Generation
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Interface Consistency
PUC devices have a unique opportunity to provide
consistency for the user
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Personal device
Used for interacting with most appliances
Three ways that PUC UIs can be made consistent
With other applications on the same device
• With the same appliance interface on a different device
• With past interfaces for similar appliances
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Interface Consistency
PUC devices have a unique opportunity to provide
consistency for the user
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•
Personal device
Used for interacting with most appliances
Three ways that PUC UIs can be made consistent
With other applications on the same device
• With the same appliance interface on a different device
• With past interfaces for similar appliances
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Questions for Consistency
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How can interfaces be consistent when they
contain different sets of functions?
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What dimensions of consistency are
important and what is their relative
importance?
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How often must a function be used before
the user will benefit from consistency?
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Different Sets of Functions?
There are a number of issues
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Behavioral Similarity
Functions may have the same behavior but have different
parameters
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Missing/Extra Functionality
Each appliance has some unique functions
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Structural Similarity
Similar functions may be organized differently
Preliminary study of two VCR specifications found examples
of all of these issues
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Behavioral and structural issues with common functions like
Power and Clock
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Different Sets of Functions?, cont.
new
previous
sparse similarity
new
previous
branch similarity
new
previous
significant similarity
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Dimensions of Consistency?
What are dimensions?
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Krzysztof gave a number
Visual
Structural
Labels
What is the relative
importance?
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Visual vs. Structural
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Usage and Consistency?
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How much must a user interact with an interface
before they will benefit from consistency?
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How recently must a user have interacted with an
interface before the benefits of consistency
degrade?
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Does usage even matter?
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Initially I thought that it did, but less convinced now.
Less commonly used functions will always be relearned,
but ensuring consistency could have benefits anyway.
Picking past interfaces with which to be consistent
based on usage is not a big issue (very few combo
appliances)
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Conclusion
There are a lot of questions to answer for multidevice and previous interface consistency
• We hope to answer many of these questions while
extending the PUC system to support consistency
• Multi-device and previous interface consistency are
related, and a solution to one will help address the
other
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Thanks for listening!
For more information…
http://www.pebbles.hcii.cmu.edu/puc/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jeffreyn/
Generating Consistent Interfaces
for Appliances
Jeffrey Nichols
Second Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User Interfaces (M3UI)
Intelligent User Interfaces Conference
January 9, 2005
Acknowledgements
Thesis Committee
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Brad A. Myers (chair)
Scott Hudson
John Zimmerman
Dan Olsen Jr.
Funding
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National Science Foundation
Microsoft
General Motors
Intel
Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse
Equipment Grants
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Mitsubishi (MERL)
VividLogic
Lucent
Lutron
Lantronix
Nokia
PUC Project Members
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Kevin Litwack
Thomas K. Harris
Michael Higgins
Joseph Hughes
Roni Rosenfeld
Rajesh Seenichamy
Pegeen Shen
Htet Htet Aung
Mathilde Pignol
Suporn Pongnumkul
Stefanie Shriver
Jeffrey Stylos
Peter Lucas
Thomas Psik
Collaborators & Friends
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Naomi Ramos
Desney Tan
Daniel Avrahami
Gaetano Borriello
Laura Dabbish
Andrew Faulring
James Fogarty
Krzysztof Gajos
Darren Gergle
Andy Ko
Amy Nichols
Mick Nichols
Sally Nichols
Trevor Pering
Fleming Seay
Irina Shklovski
Roy Want
Jake Wobbrock
and many others…
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Implementation Approach
Started by hand-designing remote
control interfaces for some
appliances
Developed interface generation rules
based on those interfaces and other
HCI heuristics
Built three interface generators for:
• PocketPC
• Smartphone
• TabletPC
Smart Templates [Nichols, IUI’04]
allow for incorporation of domainspecific renderings
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