Challenges in Ubiquitous Computing

1. Challenges in Ubiquitous Computing Patrick Malatack

2. Today’s Readings • Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing • by Gregory Abowd and Elizabeth Mynatt • The Origins of Ubiquitous Computing Research at PARC in the Late 1980s • by Mark Weiser, Rich Gold, John Seely Brown • Some Computer Science Issues in Ubiquitous Computing • by Mark Weiser

3. Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing • Natural interfaces • Context-aware applications • Automated capture and access • Continuous interaction • Privacy • Security • Visibility • Control

4. Computing with Natural Interfaces • Ubicomp inspires off the desktop applications • Needs off the desktop means of interaction • Speech, gestures, writing • More accessible • Easier to use???

5. Problems with Natural Interfaces • First Class Data Types • Keyboard and mouse • Characters and x,y coords • Most natural interfaces try to convert to first class type • Pen to text, speech to text • Current Research is working with freeform input as a primitive. • Need to find other ways of structuring input • What other problems does creating new primitive types impose • Development issues

6. Problems with Natural Interfaces • Error Prone Interaction • Permit new and numerous mistakes • People do not have perfect recognition • People don’t recognize increases in accuracy • Needs to be 5-10% to be recognized • Three areas • Error Reduction • Error Discovery • Reusable toolkit for error handling

7. Questions about Natural Interfaces • Can we ever capture subtleties of natural human communication?? • What different natural interfaces might exist?? • Nintendo Wii • Trauma Center, Wii Sports • iPhone • How is accidental communication handled? • StarTrek • “Computer:play music” • Why do developers want to build apps for these interactions? • More errors, more edge cases

8. Context Aware Computing • Current Systems • Generally using position and identification of objects • Still do not provide a complete context • Definition of context is limited • Research Areas • Context Toolkits • Toolkit for sensing environment • Explicit use of sensed information is up to program • What is Context? • How is Context represented?

9. What is Context? • Who • Currently generally tailored to one user • How important are others in determining our behavior • How could this be captured? • What • Attempt to figure out what is currently happening • Sense environment, use calendar software etc. • What is the cost of the wrong guess? • TiVo Problem • Where • Location based information • GPS • Most explored of context information • When • Easily obtained information - Computer good a remembering time • Although determining when one event stops and another begins is not easy • Why • Even harder than the “what” question, biometric sensors might help

10. Other Problems with Context • How do computers represent context • No universal context schemes, toolkits must be developed with standard context representations • Context may contain a lot of information with only a few pieces relevant for determining context. • Context Sensing and Fusion • Sensors are not as flexible as human sensors • Right sensor for right job • Use multiple sensors in parallel to offset noise • Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem • How do you know when to switch sensor? Use context

11. Automated Capture and Access • Recording information and data as it occurs • Computers are inherently good at recording, people are not • People freed up to summarize and understand • Most work in academic/ classroom settings • Time stamping lectures, digital whiteboards • Challenges in capture and access • Sometime we don’t know we want to capture something until after its already happened • How could the computer know that? • If it captures everything then we need a system of sorting and filtering (access) • Gmail Problem • Access is a problem because capturing of raw data can be burdensome for sifting through…systems need to recognize important events facilitate access

12. Challenges Everyday Computing • No clear beginning and end • Both fundamental activities like communication and Long-term endeavors do not have predefined starts and ends • Traditional HCI deals with transition users from current state to a goal state • Not necessarily a goal state • Interruptions • People are constantly interrupted • Constantly on computer systems must recognize interruption and change state • Also computers must appropriately interrupt users • Concurrency • People multitask and rapidly switch task based on external unpredictable environment • Systems need to adapt to this opportunistic behavior and change accordingly

13. Research in Everyday computing • Continuously present interface • No current model of continuously present interfaces, even people are not continuously present • Create an interface that doesn’t get annoying • Determine what information should require my attention and what should be display peripherally • Comfort and style • If constantly worn or carried must be stylish and comfortable

14. Other Challenges for Ubicomp • Hard to evaluate Ubicomp Systems • Little publish on ubicomp evaluation • Systems often required to be fully connected leading to systems that are hard to build • Lack of development toolkits make system creation difficult • Systems often need to be integrated into peoples lives which using big clunky prototypes does not lead itself well too • Task/Goal centric approaches don’t work in ubicomp

15. Social issues in Ubicomp • Privacy • Potential for misuse • How should users be informed of computer monitoring (Don’t be invisible??) • Is it ok to give up this privacy in some settings, healthcare • Do we give the hackers too much power • Security • Constant monitoring take away personal responsibility • What happens if I lose my data

16. Killer App in Ubicomp • Article talked about Ubicomp as killer existence rather than just killer app • That said killer apps like spreadsheets and word processing drove desktop proliferation • Does Ubicomp need a killer app to spur is adoption? • Where would such a killer app come from? • Business setting or home users