AIWA Shelf Stereo
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Transcript AIWA Shelf Stereo
Studying The Use of Handhelds To
Control Smart Appliances
Jeffrey Nichols
Carnegie Mellon University
May 19, 2003
Jeffrey Nichols • 0 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
The Problem
Appliances are too complex
Jeffrey Nichols • 1 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
The Problem, cont.
Each complex appliance
has its own idiosyncratic
interface!
• Home and Car Stereos
• Car Navigation Systems
• Answering Machines
•…
Increasingly
Computerized
Low Usability
Jeffrey Nichols • 2 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Our Solution
Separate the interface from the appliance!
Specifications
Control
Feedback
Key Features
User interface-independent appliance specification
Automatic generation of GUI and speech interfaces
Jeffrey Nichols • 3 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Benefits of Our Approach
Handheld has richer interface technology than
appliance can afford
Color LCD screen, touch screen, text entry technology
More effort can be put into interface design
technology
Appliance manufacturer’s must weigh trade-offs
between usability, cost, time-to-market, etc.
Two-way communication channel
Better feedback can be provided to the user regarding
the appliance’s state.
Jeffrey Nichols • 4 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Automatic Generation of UIs
Benefits
All interfaces consistent for the user
With conventions of handheld
Other applications and UI guidelines
Even from multiple manufacturers
Addresses idiosyncracy problem!
Multiple modalities (GUI + Speech UI)
Can take into account user preferences
Will work on special purpose devices (for
disabled)
Jeffrey Nichols • 5 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Outline
A First Step
User Studies
Current Work
Jeffrey Nichols • 6 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
A First Step
Build Reference Interfaces
Remote control interfaces for various
appliances that we design manually.
Verify that better interfaces can be
created on a handheld
Used for understanding what
functional knowledge is necessary to
make a good interface.
Jeffrey Nichols • 7 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Reference Interfaces
Interfaces were hand-designed
for two appliances and two
handhelds
Appliances
AIWA CX-NMT70 Shelf Stereo
AT&T 1825 Telephone/Answering
Machine
Handhelds
Palm
Microsoft PocketPC
Jeffrey Nichols • 8 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Palm Interfaces
We initially designed paper-prototype interfaces
for Palm
telephone
stereo
Jeffrey Nichols • 9 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
PocketPC Interfaces
We later implemented interfaces for Microsoft’s
PocketPC (simulated remote control).
telephone
stereo
Jeffrey Nichols • 10 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Interface Quality?
We iteratively improved the interfaces
using heuristic analysis techniques.
We conducted a think-aloud study
with several Carnegie Mellon students
to find problems in the interfaces.
Lastly, we conducted a user study that
compared our reference interfaces
with the manufacturer’s interfaces.
Jeffrey Nichols • 11 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Outline
A First Step
User Studies
Current Work
Jeffrey Nichols • 12 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
User Studies
Two Studies
Study #1:
Paper-Prototype Palm vs. Actual
Appliance
Study #2:
Functional PocketPC vs. Actual
Appliance
Jeffrey Nichols • 13 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
User Studies, cont.
Procedure
We did a between-subjects study.
Each subject worked on two sets of
tasks.
In order to minimize subjects, each worked
on both the stereo and the phone.
We controlled for order and interface
type.
Jeffrey Nichols • 14 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Evaluation of Task Performance
Three Metrics:
Time to complete all tasks
Number of times help was requested
How often did the subject need the manual
or online help?
Number of missteps
Misstep = the pressing of a button that does
not advance the progress on the current
task
No missteps were counted after the user
requested help.
Jeffrey Nichols • 15 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
User Study #1: PalmOS
Compared paper prototype
interfaces with the interfaces of
the actual appliances
Experimenter changed paper
as subjects tapped
Control of stereo and phone
simulated verbally
When the stereo started playing music,
the experimenter said “you now hear
music from the stereo”
Jeffrey Nichols • 16 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
User Study #1, cont.
Participants
13 Carnegie Mellon Graduate Students
Five female, Eight male
Enrolled in School of Computer Science
Volunteers (unpaid)
Seven owned a Palm device
One had no Palm experience
Four owned Aiwa-brand stereo systems
Jeffrey Nichols • 17 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
User Study #1 Results
Users made five
times the errors
and needed help
twice as often with
the actual
appliances!
All results
significant
(p < 0.001 for all)
Jeffrey Nichols • 18 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
User Study #2
We implemented the interfaces
on a handheld and simulated
remote control of an actual
appliance.
Remote control applications built
in Visual Basic on a PocketPC
Control of stereo and phone
simulated in software
Feedback appeared to come from the
actual appliance
Jeffrey Nichols • 19 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
User Study #2, cont.
Participants
Twelve students from Carnegie Mellon
Four female, Eight male
Volunteered in response to a newsgroup
advertisement
Paid $7 for their participation (30-45 minutes)
All had limited handheld experience
Half (6) owned Aiwa-brand stereos
Two had AT&T digital answering machines
Jeffrey Nichols • 20 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
User Study #2 Results
All differences are significant (p < 0.05)
About ½ the time and ½ the errors!
Jeffrey Nichols • 21 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Qualitative Results
Why were the reference interfaces
better?
Clear feedback and explanation of the
current state was possible.
Elements could be disabled on the
screen (graying out)
Functions were separated across
multiple screens.
Jeffrey Nichols • 22 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Outline
A First Step
User Studies
Current Work
Jeffrey Nichols • 23 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Current Work
Designed a XML-based Specification Lang
Functions of Device
State Variables and Commands
Labeling
Multiple labels are necessary
Grouping
Hierarchical groups
Dependency Information
For enabling and structure
Jeffrey Nichols • 24 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Current Work, cont.
Built multiple
automatic interface
generators
PocketPC
SmartPhone
Tablet PC
(desktop)
Speech
Jeffrey Nichols • 25 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Control of Real Appliances
Jeffrey Nichols • 26 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Acknowledgements
Funding
National Science
Foundation
Microsoft
General Motors
Pittsburgh Digital
Greenhouse
Equipment Grants
Mitsubishi (MERL)
VividLogic
Hewlett-Packard
PUC Project Members
Brad A. Myers
Thomas K. Harris
Roni Rosenfeld
Michael Higgins
Joseph Hughes
Kevin Litwack
Rajesh Seenichamy
Mathilde Pignol
Stefanie Shriver
Jeffrey Stylos
Peter Lucas
Jeffrey Nichols • 27 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Thanks!
For more information see…
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jeffreyn/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pebbles/puc/
Or e-mail me at…
[email protected]
Jeffrey Nichols • 28 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Jeffrey Nichols • 29 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Actual Appliance Interfaces
Lots of Problems
Poorly labeled and overloaded buttons
Insufficient feedback
Timer example
Programming the speed-dial
Phone has technical separation between
phone and answering machine
Jeffrey Nichols • 30 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Qualitative Results
Grouping controls is important
Groups define which elements are
placed adjacent to each other and
how elements are separated onto
pages.
Groupings vary between devices
and interface styles.
Jeffrey Nichols • 31 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Qualitative Results, cont.
Dual-associated functions are
hard to make obvious for users
The record button is associated
with both tapes (record onto) and
each of the other modes (recorded
from).
Some users expected the first
mapping to used, whereas the
controller used the second
mapping.
Jeffrey Nichols • 32 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Qualitative Results, cont.
Tree-based structures are not
sufficient for fully describing an
interface
Some interface concepts, especially dualassociated functions, break the tree
because they may interact with the
children of several different elements
within the tree
The record button breaks the stereo’s tree
structure because it is globally accessible
but has different local effects.
Jeffrey Nichols • 33 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Qualitative Results, cont.
A single function may map to multiple
interface widgets (and vice versa)
Example: One state variable could be used
to represent all of the playback states of a
tape player. The play, stop, fast-forward,
and rewind buttons all act on this single
variable.
Jeffrey Nichols • 34 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Applying These Results
We are actively applying these results
to the design of the specification
language
A tree-grouping structure is augmented
with a dependency graph to help describe
dual-mapped functions
Ranking relationships within groups using
“priorities”
We will also apply them in the design
of the automatic layout engine
Jeffrey Nichols • 35 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Future Work
Build the specification language
and automatic generation engine
Jeffrey Nichols • 36 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
A Hard Problem…
Automatically generating a good user
interface is hard, but we think we can
do it for several reasons:
Remote controls are a special class of user
interface that use relatively simple
interaction techniques.
Buttons, text fields, and other standard
widgets.
Our approach differs from earlier work…
Jeffrey Nichols • 37 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
The Approach
Study Interfaces
Functional knowledge of the appliance
What must the appliance tell the handheld
about itself so that a “good” interface can
be constructed.
Design and Layout
How do we turn the knowledge about the
appliance into a usable interface?
Design a specification language
Build an automatic interface generator
Jeffrey Nichols • 38 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Our Progress…
Study Interfaces
Functional knowledge of the appliance
What must the appliance tell the handheld
about itself so that a “good” interface can
be constructed.
Design and Layout
How do we turn the knowledge about the
appliance into a usable interface?
Design a specification language
(in progress)
Build an automatic interface generator
Jeffrey Nichols • 39 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003
Problems with User Study #1
Paper-prototype study introduced a
high possibility of experimenter
interference.
Solution
Create an environment that completely
simulates what one might experience using
a personal universal controller
Interfaces running on an actual handheld
Interfaces should appear to control an
actual appliance
Jeffrey Nichols • 40 • International Workshop on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing • May 19, 2003