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Digital Simplicity. James A. Landay Professor, University of Washington Director, Intel Research Seattle UW CSE Affiliates Meeting November 4, 2004. One Vision of the Digital Home Moving Digital Media Around.
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Digital Simplicity James A. Landay Professor, University of Washington Director, Intel Research Seattle UW CSE Affiliates Meeting November 4, 2004
One Vision of the Digital HomeMoving Digital Media Around “Think of the digital home as media file access from anywhere to anywhere” – Intel ad Digital Simplicity
Rich Gold “Dancing Toaster” One Vision of the Digital HomeAutonomousIntelligent Appliances Digital Simplicity
Digital Simplicity • Technology seen as speeding up & complicating our lives • PCs, Blackberrys, & email, are at root of this • leads many to avoid it (no PC, no cell phone...) • research especially suffers from this – focus on new functionality in return for added complexity in your life • Develop ubicomp technologies that simplify our lives • Focus on the home & our lives outside of work • long lasting, unstructured physical activities & information • more difficult than typical office scenarios • info technology adoption limited in these domains Digital Simplicity
Digital SimplicityWhat’s in & What’s out • Out • Home-versions of office-based productivity tasks • Finance, taxes, word processing, email • Exceptions: family scheduling? • In • Health & wellness • Relationships/communication • Entertainment • Monitoring resource consumption & conservation • Dimensions: physical vs. virtual, office vs. home, productivity vs. simplicity Digital Simplicity
Digital Simplicity Research Directions • Applications • health & fitness – use sensing to track physical activity throughout the day & make it easier to meet goals • help boomers care for aging loved ones • Technology • use natural multimodal input to control apps & activities • configuring home environments by simple demonstrations • Design • sensors/actuators that can be easily installed & maintained • user interaction language for ubicomp in the digital home • design patterns to communicate & reuse design knowledge Digital Simplicity
Digital Simplicity Applications ResearchHealth & Fitness • Tracking & journaling activity, weight, & nutrition have been shown to be keys to achieving fitness • unfortunately, many find this hard to do • Finding time to be healthy also difficult • Automatically track activity throughout the day • walking, running, bicycling, going up stairs, etc. • weight at regular times (e.g., brushing your teeth) • Give users ways to meet goals by getting “credit” for what they already do & encourage to do more • tracking & prompting • ambient jewelry (e.g., ring with LEDs) • Communicate results with others • compete, support, coach (PT in the phone)… Digital Simplicity
Digital Simplicity Technology ResearchReliable & Natural Multimodal Input • Speech, gesture, & direct manipulation • Natural for control of applications • Multiple modalities reduce ambiguity & adapt to situations • e.g., quiet time • Speech & language understanding can be made more reliable given context of use • location (Place Lab) • RFID-tagged objects in current room • state of computing equipment • recent activities (SHARP) Digital Simplicity
Aiding Speech RecognitionHuman Activity Inferences • Sam is cooking & turns on the exhaust fan • He can barely hear the TV • He says “Turn it up” • House is confident “turn it up” was said • Historically “volume up” has been the correct interpretation during this activity • House correctly interprets Sam’s intention & turns up the volume on the TV Digital Simplicity
Digital Simplicity Design ResearchSimple Sensors & Actuators • Easily installed in existing homes by end-users • Desirable to install (aesthetic, simplifies an activity, etc.) • Reliable – self healing, self configuring, etc. • Our first cut at this (home energy tutor) was a success Digital Simplicity
Digital Simplicity Design ResearchUser Interaction Language for Ubicomp Digital Simplicity
The GUI Interaction Language Digital Simplicity
The GUI Interaction Language Digital Simplicity
What is the Ubicomp Interaction Language? Digital Simplicity
What is the Ubicomp Interaction Language? Digital Simplicity
Digital Simplicity Status • Just starting to explore the research agenda • working on multimodal/speech UI • continuing work on design pre-patterns • Building a prototype home environment Digital Simplicity
Conclusions • Digital Simplicity is an effort to create useful technology that simplifies our hurried lives • Our research agenda encompasses • Applications • health & fitness • Technology • multimodal input & end-user configuration • Design • sensors, interaction language, design patterns (poster in 603) Digital Simplicity
Digital Simplicity Technology ResearchEnd-User Configuration of Ubicomp Environments • Examples • “save all songs I listen to on the radio, except for classical” • “record all football to Tivo, but save all Cal games to disk” • End-users have a hard time configuring, let alone programming • people can’t program home heating systems [Blackwell] • Possible solutions to configuration problem • use simple physical & electronic demonstrations • end-user programming made easier by • computer vision informed by same context as in multimodal case • manipulation of RFID-tagged objects Digital Simplicity