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Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances

Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances. Jeffrey Nichols Second Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User Interfaces (M3UI) Intelligent User Interfaces Conference January 9, 2005. Appliances are complex and often hard to use! User interfaces are idiosyncratic!. Problem.

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Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances

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  1. Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances Jeffrey Nichols Second Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User Interfaces (M3UI) Intelligent User Interfaces Conference January 9, 2005

  2. Appliances are complex and often hard to use! User interfaces are idiosyncratic! Problem

  3. Personal Universal Controller Specifications Control Feedback Use mobile devices to control all appliances in the environment Mobile Devices Appliances Key Features Two-way communication, Abstract Descriptions, Multiple Platforms, Automatic Interface Generation

  4. Interface Consistency PUC devices have a unique opportunity to provide consistency for the user • 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

  5. Interface Consistency PUC devices have a unique opportunity to provide consistency for the user • 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

  6. Questions for Consistency • How can interfaces be consistent when they contain different sets of functions? • What dimensions of consistency are important and what is their relative importance? • How often must a function be used before the user will benefit from consistency?

  7. Different Sets of Functions? There are a number of issues • Behavioral Similarity Functions may have the same behavior but have different parameters • Missing/Extra Functionality Each appliance has some unique functions • Structural Similarity Similar functions may be organized differently Preliminary study of two VCR specifications found examples of all of these issues • Behavioral and structural issues with common functions like Power and Clock

  8. Different Sets of Functions?, cont. new previous sparse similarity new previous new previous branch similarity significant similarity

  9. Dimensions of Consistency? What are dimensions? • Krzysztof gave a number • Visual • Structural • Labels What is the relative importance? • Visual vs. Structural

  10. Usage and Consistency? • How much must a user interact with an interface before they will benefit from consistency? • How recently must a user have interacted with an interface before the benefits of consistency degrade? • Does usage even matter? • 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)

  11. Conclusion • There are a lot of questions to answer for multi-device 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

  12. Thanks for listening! For more information… http://www.pebbles.hcii.cmu.edu/puc/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jeffreyn/

  13. Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances Jeffrey Nichols Second Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User Interfaces (M3UI) Intelligent User Interfaces Conference January 9, 2005

  14. Thesis Committee Brad A. Myers (chair) Scott Hudson John Zimmerman Dan Olsen Jr. Funding National Science Foundation Microsoft General Motors Intel Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse Equipment Grants Mitsubishi (MERL) VividLogic Lucent Lutron Lantronix Nokia PUC Project Members 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 Acknowledgements Collaborators & Friends • 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…

  15. 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 domain-specific renderings

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