User Interactions: a chievements, lessons and open issues Eamonn O ’ Neill Academic Coordinator

1. User Interactions: achievements, lessons and open issues Eamonn O’Neill Academic Coordinator October 2012

2. User Interactions programme: aims & objectives • The overall goal of this research programme was to facilitate new breakthrough services through the exploration, evolution, demonstration and evaluation of advanced user interaction modalities capable of stimulating new markets within the framework of personal lifestyle support services • The research aimed to identify, implement and demonstrate novel interaction modalities • Key phrases … • Vision: facilitate new breakthrough services • Research activities: explore, evolve, demonstrate and evaluate advanced user interaction modalities • Context: within the framework of personal lifestyle support services

3. Research areas • Effective device interaction modalities - the ways in which a user may interact with an increasing variety of personally-owned devices • Effective environmental interaction modalities - the ways in which a user may interact with technology embedded within her environment • Combinations of these two to create deeper interactions and service capabilities • An important complementary, but qualitatively different, element of the research is the requirement that user interaction approaches reflect user acceptance and can support emerging and/or potentially new business models

4. Personal device interaction modalities • Pressure-based interactions for mobile devices • Pressure-based interactions can be tailored to specific tasks • Examples of applications: pressure-based scrolling, pressure-based zooming, pressure-based menus, pressure-augmented buttons and pressure-augmented displays and icons • Thermal feedback for mobile devices • Temperature can be used as ambient feedback and can be combined with other modalities, e.g. audio, visual etc • Challenges included determining human perceptions of temperature when static and mobile and • … developing an understanding of tasks or services for which thermal feedback can be useful

5. Environmental interaction modalities • Gesture as a method of interacting within a device ecology • Syntax and semantics of gestural interaction • Learnability and metaphor in the design of gestures for hands-free interaction • Transferability of gestures: generalizing gestures across different contexts and applications

6. Ecologies of interaction • Combining gesture and pressure input with a 3D visual display • Spatial coupling and multiple display environments • Fixed spatial coupling through the relative placement and orientation of hardware (fixed camera, fixed projector etc) • Dynamic spatial coupling: mobile devices can be spatially reconfigured to create different juxtapositions and arrangements that suit particular situations and activities

7. Lessons and open issues • Novel interaction techniques and applications are under explored • The key challenge for the industry has been transformed from one of handset and telecommunication service innovation to one of global digital ecosystem development • Generativity:the ability of a system to generate new content, structure or behaviour without additional help or input from its original creators. A firm seeking to get value from its service innovation within a digital ecosystem must support generativity without losing control • Service composition – by users, by developers • Railway station paradox: richer content and richer interaction vs network capabilities

8. Thank you ! eamonn@cs.bath.ac.uk