Paper Reading #14: A framework for robust and flexible handling of inputs with uncertainty

Reference Information
Title: A framework for robust and flexible handling of inputs with uncertainty
Authors: Julia Schwarz, Scott E. Hudson, Jennifer Mankoff, Andrew D. Wilson
Venue: UIST '10: Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology


Summary
This paper is about addressing the natural error in new age user input devices such as touch screens and pointers. While these devices tend to convey input in a very error prone manner, the interpretation of their input is quickly converted to boolean values typically by programs. This results in a loss of information that is not ideal.


To address this, the authors propose ranking events on a decimal scale, similar to how analog to digital converters work. The event is either true or false dependent on a threshold set on the decimal value, but the information of what exactly happened is maintained, allowing additional logic to interpret the event.

Discussion
I found the concept behind this idea interesting, however the mouse is as uncertain as pointers and touch screens. The style of input hasn't changed, in all three cases you are essentially pointing to a location on screen and triggering an event. I wonder how useful this research really is, considering that the mouse works just fine, and touch screens appear to be doing quite well as well. If there is an issue with touch interfaces, it is because using a finger to point is too big, as opposed to a mouse or a pointer - not because the style or interaction has changed.