05-771 HCI Process and Theory

1. 05-771HCI Process and Theory Scott Hudson scott.hudson@cs.cmu.edu Ken Koedinger koedinger@cmu.edu

2. The (no longer mythical) P&T course… • Serves as intro to HCI research • New course • Experimental structure • Broad / diverse subject matter • Intertwined with a practical project • A vehicle for exposure to diverse approaches • Team taught (by much of the HCII faculty) • Scott is instructor of record • Ken is coordinating

3. Project orientation • Theme project as organizing mechanism • Real project with a lot of details reflecting the reality of academic research: • Finding a worthwhile problem / idea of interest • Forming a team and a project that works for it • Getting it funded • Doing the work • Structuring vehicle for • HCI background (readings and discussion) • Viewpoints on doing research • Practical projects for you

4. You will propose a project • Something… • Within the theme (broadly defined) • Interesting and worthwhile • Maybe leads to publication and/or follow on work • You can “sell” (to faculty and other students) • Doable this semester • Short initial project proposal week 4

5. Course outline • Introduction • Intro to the theme project • HCI research • Finding problems / ideas • History of problems and approaches • Working in interdisciplinary teams • “Seeds” • Personal and disciplinary views of problems and directions of inquiry

6. Course outline (cont.) • Project proposals • Designed to be analog to a typical grant proposal • Need to sell to fellow students • Need to find a faculty mentor • Projects • Will select about 1/3 to actually do • Work in small teams • Lots of discussions along the way • Final presentations

7. Administrative stuff…

8. Class meetings • Scheduling was very difficult and result is not optimal • Will meet for two 90 minute lectures a week but time slot will vary depending on the instructors for the week • No single pair of times worked for all instructors • Possible times: • Monday 4:30-6:00 & 6:00-7:30 • Friday 12:00-1:30 & 1:30-3:00

9. Class meetings • Conflicts? • Strategy preference (vote for one) (1) Split Mon/Fri (2) Long day • Time Preferences (vote for two) • Mon 4:30-6:00 (2) Mon 6:00-7:30 • Fri 12:00-1:30 (4) Fri 1:30-3:00

10. Tentative grading criteria • 15% class participation • 25% project proposal • 60% final project

11. Photos • Not absolutely required, but we would really like to have a photo of you to create a name/face sheet to help various instructors • Shoot one today • Send me one • Email saying you don’t want a photo taken scott.hudson@cs.cmu.edu

12. Class communications • If you are not an HCII PhD student (i.e., on the hcii-phd-students@cs mailing list) send me email indicating your preferred email address (today!) http:/www.cs.cmu.edu/~hudson/teaching/05-771/

13. Questions?

14. The theme project: Situationally Appropriate Interaction • Principal investigators (PI and co-PIs) Scott Hudson, Jodi Forlizzi, Sara Kiesler, Chris Atkeson, Jie Yang, Yoky Matsuoka • Just funded (sort of) in NSF ITR program • Also have DARPA seed funds for 1yr Proposal that describes this project assigned as reading for today: http:/www.cs.cmu.edu/~hudson/teaching/05-771/hudson_ITR_no_sal.pdf

15. Motivation Exponential growth of technology offers wonderful promise, but… “In an information rich world the scarce resource is human attention” [Simon ’67] …We are going to loose a bunch of that benefit to the human costs • Attention is a big cost, but also others This project is about finding solutions for that

16. Motivation • Currently interfaces are mostly blind to the human situation they sit in • They can’t tell the difference between • working alone at home at 2am, • at work in a big meeting, • giving a talk, or • attending a funeral or a movie • Blunder blindly through the human world • Try to create systems that maneuver through the human (social) world • One view: rudimentary “manners”

17. Scenario • “Lee” (AKA Scott) moves between situations • Public vs. private • Focused individual work vs. less focused work vs. group work • System acts appropriately • Attention demand for displays • Communications filtering • Privacy issues

18. Illustrates framework of: Sense, Model, Act Appropriately • Sense • Gather basic useful information about what is happening in the situation • Model • Analyze and structure the basic information into something usable • Act appropriately • Do the right thing in the interface • Display and interaction

19. Goals for results • Systems which can deal with some of the basics of the human (social) world, e.g., • know when not to interrupt, • demand the right amount of attention, • limit private information in public settings, etc.

20. Discussion • Is the scenario possible/practical/doable? • Other scenarios? • Other situations • Other task domains

21. Sensing • Concentrate on non-invasive sensors • Vision based sensing (also spatial audio) • Expand later to other modalities • Provide basic information such as: • Who is in a space • How many • Where are they looking • What objects are they touching • How much are they moving

22. Discussion • Most predicative cues? • Other sensor technologies? • Cheap and easy to exotic

23. Modeling • This is a key piece • Probably the hard part • Advantages (“levers”) we have • Understanding social phenomena involved • Cognitive modeling expertise • Integration and tight feedback with other parts

24. Modeling • Models of social situation • Social engagement • Conversation detection • Meeting detection and classification • Also individual work models • Multi-tasking levels • Task switching and stacking • And task models • Probably task specific

25. Discussion • What models? • What’s possible/promising to create? • What’s most useful?

26. Acting appropriately • Given information from models“do the right thing” • At least two parts: Display Interaction

27. Acting appropriately: Display • Attention demand is again a key • Know how to create displays that demand a lot of attention • Whole literature on alarm design • Know a lot less about how to create displays that demand less attention • Much harder because they have to be able to deliver information • Not even a lot in the way of design examples • Ambient information displays

28. Acting appropriately: Display • Goal for results • Library of display techniques graded/sorted by salience (prominence or attention demand) • Mechanisms for composing displays at a given level of salience • Methods • Two bodies of knowledge to draw from: • Sensory and perceptual psychology • Design • Build and experiment

29. Discussion • What experimental setup should be used to do the grading/sorting of salience?

30. Acting appropriately: Interaction • Displays will be much more useful if they are not static, but can be interacted with • Similar issues: • We know how to build interfaces we are fully engaged with • We have few examples of systems which are useful, but don’t require a lot of engagement

31. Sample interactions Acknowledgement Deferral Delegation Drill-down

32. Discussion • Other interactions?

33. Observation and evaluation • Background “formative evaluation” • Wizard of OZ study • Salience evaluations • Technology trials • Usability studies

34. Wizard of OZ study (ongoing) • Which sensors/models are most useful for predicting interruptability? • Simulate sensors • A/V recording • Human plays sensor • Self report interruptability • “Experience sampling” • Randomly poll the user to rate interruptability • Find correlations

35. Discussion • What other observation and studies should be done?

36. Project overview wrap-up • For this class we want to take a wide interpretation of this project • Many good problems in there in many areas • Next, some discussion of where did this research direction come from

37. Readings • “The Coming Age of Calm Technology”, Mark Weiser and John Seeley Brownhttp://nano.xerox.com/hypertext/weiser/acmfuture2endnote.htm • “Techniques for addressing fundamental privacy and disruption tradeoffs in awareness support systems”, Scott Hudson and Ian Smith, Proceedings of CSCW ’96. http://www.acm.org/pubs/citations/proceedings/cscw/240080/p248-hudson/