Extra Credit Paper #8 (CHI 2010 #16)

Title: Planz to Put Our Digital Information in Its Place

Authors: William Jones, Dawei Hou, Bhuricha Deen Sethanandh, Sheng Bi, and Jim Gemmell

Venue: CHI 2010

Summary
Planz is a personal project planner that works as an application overlay for the existing file system, or email and web pages. The author's state that they envision folders as working somewhat like doors, but would prefer them to work more like windows, and this is what their application attempts to implement. Planz focuses on a primary document that functions as an outline. Two primary features of Planz are "Drag & Link" and "In-context Create".

Discussion
This seems like a neat idea, but I think the author's are attempting to do too much. Its really hard to make an interface with lots of features that people still want to use, because the more features you add the more trouble people will have learning to use the software. This is a problem I think Planz will suffer from. Additionally, removing the windows style of file management altogether will raise heavy handicaps in the time it takes users to learn the new system, a price that probably doesn't justify the implementation of the interface.

Extra Credit Paper #7 (CHI 2010 #15)

Title: Manual Deskterity: An Exploration of Simultaneous Pen + Touch Direct Input
Authors: Ken Hinckley, Koji Yatani, Michel Pahud, Nicole Coddington, Jenny Rodenhouse, and Andy Wilson, Hrvoje Benko, Bill Buxton
Venue: CHI 2010

Summary
Manual Deskterity is a scrapbook application that  uses pen and touch devices to allow user to create a digital scrapbook. Although the application can certainly be used to create scrapbooks, the focus of the project was on the HCI elements between the users and the interface. The use of both a pen and touch input is important to this study, and was part of the reason why an application for scrapbooking was chosen for study.

Author's compared how users interacted with a real scrapbook and the digital version. While the digital interface was not intended to fully mimic how users interact with the real thing, it does have elements from this. For example, the pen is typically used for writing, while touch is used for object manipulation.

Discussion
I liked this application, although mostly for the elements of HCI study that the author's implemented into the application design. This application was extremely heavy on user studies, which I think is a good thing, and something other papers could use more of.

Extra Credit Paper #6 (CHI 2010 #14)

Title: Adaptive Mouse: A Deformable Computer Mouse Achieving Form-Function Synchronization
Authors: Shen Kai Tang and Wen Yen Tang
Venue: CHI 2010

Summary

This paper introduces a new input device termed Adaptive Mouse, which is similar to the existing device from which it got its name. The new device is intended to have a flexible shape that fits each user's hand differently, unlike existing models. The most interesting aspect of the Adaptive Mouse however, is that the device is initially circular, and users can hold it anyway they like. As the device is composed of eight subsections, clicking on any one of those locations will register a different click. Through the use of a hall-sensor, a magnet and a special algorithm, the device determines the location of the hand placed on it and activates appropriate regions to correspond to right and left clicks.

Discussion
I don't personally think this device has much application, or a future really beyond someone's pet project. While it is interesting to be able to hold the device any way you like, this is really more of a novelty and does little to enhance the user's interaction with a given interface. I feel the real innovations in HCI will come from voice and touch activated interfaces. The authors in this article are focusing on a device that is already extremely well established and requires virtually no improvement.

Extra Credit Paper #5 (CHI 2010 #13)

Title: Tangible Video Bubbles
Authors: Kimiko Ryokai, Hayes Raffle, Hiroshi Horii, and Yotam Mann
Venue: CHI 2010

Summary

Tangible Video Bubbles is an interface for children that allows for video recording manipulation. The interface is intended to be both fun and instructive, by helping to stimulate the understanding of semantics. Videos are recorded, and then displayed on a screen, where they can be repositioned and played back to the user through interaction with a ball. As the video is displayed in a bubble on the screen, it resembles the shape of the ball. Speed and position within the recorded clip can be controlled by various manipulations on the ball, such as squeezing.

Discussion
This is an interesting concept, and certainly very innovative. It would be interesting to incorporate some other type of visuals in the display, such as perhaps graphically displaying audio recorded by the child. Children could then manipulate the words and letters to play some type of game. The existing system is still very good though, and could be useful in enhancing basic intelligence in children.

Extra Credit Paper #4 (CHI 2010 #12)

Title: Tangible Interfaces for Download: Initial Observations from Users' Everyday Environments
Authors: Enrico Costanza, Matteo Giaccone, Olivier Kung, Simon Shelley, and Jeffrey Huang
Venue: CHI 2010

Summary
This paper presents Audio d-touch, a low cost tangible user interface for musical composition. As the software is free, the only costs associated with the interface are those related to hardware components required. A folded piece of paper is used to define the interface with key visual markers used as a reference. Interactions with objects on the paper are recorded by a webcam, and music composed can be played back to the user.

Discussion
While this software is still in the early phases of development, as freeware the authors are likely to do well with it. Projects like Audio d-touch represent an important counterbalance to commercial software, by forcing companies to maintain quality standards, and proving that sometimes their software isn't worth as much as they claim it is. A good example of this would be open office and Microsoft word, where the latter is encouraged to refine its interface, support, and features to continue to be distinguished as a superior product.

Extra Credit Paper #3 (CHI 2010 #11)

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Extra Credit Paper #2 (CHI 2010 #10)

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Extra Credit Paper #1 (CHI 2010 #9)

Title: There's Methodology in the Madness: Toward Critical HCI Ethnography
Authors: Amanda Williams, Lilly Irani
Venue: CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia

Summary
This paper details some of the problems found in qualitative data collection from current ethnographies, and suggests more generalized approaches than those currently used. The complication in rhetoric of the user and the expansion of field sites that widen the scope of HCI and the issues these topics raise are also discussed as new developments within HCI.

The authors also discuss how the boundaries of field sites have changed, and ethnographers have taken on a more direct invasive approach recently. To address this, they propose that the criteria for ethnographies be revaluated. Below is one of the models for ethnographic research discussed in the paper:

Discussion
While I wasn't terribly interested in the topic itself, I think the author's work is imporant. Certainly any time you feel that the validity of research in your field is being compromised you should speak out and do your best to address it. This paper might have been more interesting to read had I done so before our ethnography this semester.

Paper Reading #25: Using language complexity to measure cognitive load for adaptive interaction design

Title: Using language complexity to measure cognitive load for adaptive interaction design

Authors: M. Asif Khawaja, Fang Chen, and Nadine Marcus.

Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Comments

http://isthishci.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-25-using-language.html
http://vincehci.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-25-email-overload.html

Summary
This paper was based heavily on the concept of cognitive load, the idea that a given task imposes a mental load on the individual working on it similar to the load on a CPU. The authors present an adaptive interaction system which measures this load, and adapts itself to improve user experience and performance. Cognitive load is measured through speech content analysis based on their language and dialog complexity. Because the medium used for measuring cognitive load was speech, operators (such as support) were analyzed for the data presented. A breakdown of data collected is included in the table below.

Discussion
I found that this paper was less about an adaptive system and more study focused than the authors originally claimed, which suggests that the abstract is somewhat misleading. As a study however, I feel their work is promising. There is obviously a correlation between speech and cognitive load, although more work should be done to investigate other ways of measuring cognitive load so that the results can be verified more strongly.

Paper Reading #24: Mobia Modeler: easing the creation process of mobile applications for non-technical users

Title: Mobia Modeler: easing the creation process of mobile applications for non-technical users

Authors: Florence Balagtas-Fernandez, Max Tafelmayer, and Heinrich Hussmann.

Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Comments

http://isthishci.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-24-natural-language.html
http://vincehci.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-24-finding-your-way.html

Summary
This paper details a development tool termed Mobia Modeler designed to enable users without programing experience to create their own mobile applications. The tool features configurable components that are common in mobile applications. To illustrate the concept, this paper focused on health monitoring applications for mobile devices. The authors go on to describe a sample application called Health Monitor created using Mobia Modeler, and the steps taken to create the application. A labeled screenshot of the interface in use is shown below:

Discussion
I thought this was one of the most applicable projects of all the papers I have read in the intelligent user interfaces venue. While the quality of apps created by this program will almost certainly be lower than applications created by someone with programming knowledge, this type of innovation has great potential to take off. Blogs like this one are a similar concept, where most individuals don't have the time or experience to make quality websites, blogs provide a compromise between quality and features, and ease of use.

Paper Reading #23: Evaluating the design of inclusive interfaces by simulation

Title: Evaluating the design of inclusive interfaces by simulation

Authors: Pradipta Biswas, and Peter Robinson.

Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Comments

http://detentionblockaa32.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-23-natural-language.html
http://vincehci.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-23-automatic-warning-cues.html

Summary
This paper details a proposed simulator for the design of assistive interfaces. The simulator can help predict possible interaction patterns when undertaking a task using different input devices in the presence of extraneous circumstances, such as disabilities. While the exact method of predication is not discussed in the paper, the authors describe the results of an experiment conducted with 7 individuals. Elements from figures 1 and 2 were isolated and displayed to each individual, and then they were asked to click on the same icon when it was displayed in a group.

The average relative error in response time was found to be 16% with a standard deviation of 54%. In 10% of the trials the relative error was more than 100%. Removing these outliers resulted in a average relative error of 6% with a standard deviation of 42%.

Discussion
I didn't like this paper very much. The general concept is interesting and somewhat unprecedented, as the authors are essentially attempting to quantify interface design, but the results were very poor in my opinion. Additionally, the sample size was too small to draw any meaningful conclusions from, and the paper states that all participants were trained for the experiment. Additionally, the authors appeared to think it was acceptable to remove 10% of the data points constituting outliers from the data analysis. If their system was implemented in interface design, I think a 10% chance for the system to just fail altogether on a prediction is extremely high, and not something that can be discounted.

Paper Reading #22: From documents to tasks: deriving user tasks from document usage patterns

Title: From documents to tasks: deriving user tasks from document usage patterns

Authors: Oliver Brdiczka

Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Comments

http://detentionblockaa32.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-22-personalized-user.html
http://vincehci.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-22-pomdp-approach.html

Summary
The focus of this paper was on increasing the efficiency of multitasking in the average workplace. Existing systems for task management require a large amount of time investment from users to be effective, because the systems need to be 'trained' in order to work correctly. This paper proposes a new approach for automatically estimating a user's tasks from document interactions, without requiring access to the content of those documents. The system described in the paper instead looks at only the switches between which document is being interacted with by monitoring each user's activities and logging which documents had focus and when. Comparing this data allows the authors to build a similarity matrix based on document focus frequencies, dwell times, and switches. A clustering algorithm is then used to group documents into tasks based on the similarity matrix.

To evaluate the performance of the system, three values were used, called prevision, recall and F-measure. Precision refers to the faction of documents in a cluster that belong to the task label of that cluster, recall represents the fraction of all document that belong to a task label and appear in the corresponding cluster, and F-measure is the weighted mean of precision and recall. These values are graphed to the left.

Discussion
The system described in this paper seems promising. The authors described existing systems as either deficient, or requiring access to the content and title of each document in order to derive similarities from them, which raises security concerns in some businesses. It would be interesting to see how this approach compares to other systems that do analyze the content of each document in order to determine if the patterns associated with document access is sufficient to build similarities, or if more information is needed.

Paper Reading #21: iSlideShow: a content-aware slideshow system

Title: iSlideShow: a content-aware slideshow system

Authors: Jiajian Chen, Jun Xiao and Yuli Gao.

Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Comments

http://shennessy11.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-21.html
http://detentionblockaa32.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-21-social-signal.html

Summary
iSlideShow is a system for automatically analyzing information from photo collections to create compositions and transitions similar to traditional slideshows. The authors describe two modes: a story-telling mode and a person-highlighting mode. The former mode instructs the system to use a theme-based clustering algorithm where multiple photos within a theme are tiled on the same slide. Different layouts are used and the slideshow is animated by transitions between clusters.

The second mode type, the system uses face detection algorithms to highlight faces within the photos and creates clusters based on the presence of certain individuals. Transitions in this mode are preformed between clusters of individuals within the photos.

To the left is an example interface for the slideshow. Each cluster is displayed as a sort of collage, and the location within the slideshow is displayed by the preview bar.

Discussion
While interesting, I felt this system had little to do with computer human interaction, or really anything beyond screen savers. The system described is obviously not intended for the creation of a presentation, and the uses of computer generated collages is fairly low. I didn't feel like the system really did innovated on anything either, as face detection algorithms are widely available through the Intel computer vision library (which is free to use). Themes were clustered by simply using time stamps on the photos, so besides utilizing well established algorithms for facial recognition, the system really isn't intelligent at all as the authors claim.

Paper Reading #20: Raconteur: from intent to stories

Title: Raconteur: from intent to stories
Authors: Chi, Pei-Yu and Lieberman, Henry
Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Comments
http://angel-at-chi.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-20-rush-repeated.html
http://shennessy11.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-20.html

Summary
This paper presents a story editing system to help with video and picture editing for novices. The software, called Raconteur, helps users assemble coherent stories for media elements. Commonsense, a reasoning technique and database, is used to identify similar story elements and link them together. In other words, the interface provided is intelligent and attempts to automatically relate uploaded pictures based on a short description provided by the user. The picture below shows the interface of Raconteur.













Discussion
The interface presented in the article reminded me mostly of facebook, and I have a feeling that this is the audience the authors had in mind for the product. Unlike most articles, this one has the feel of also being a product in addition to being research, which makes me doubt the objectivity of the content. In any case, I like the general idea, even if the technology could be better applied else where. When it comes down to it, any system like this will get things wrong from time to time, and when it does users will spend much more time than they ordinary would have to fix it, or else wont notice the mistake at all. Intelligent systems are better used for data mining, such as Watson.

Paper Reading #19: Social signal processing: detecting small group interaction in leisure activity

Title: Social signal processing: detecting small group interaction in leisure activity
Authors: Eyal Dim, Tsvi Kuflik
Venue: IUI '10: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces


Comments
http://shennessy11.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-19.html
http://angel-at-chi.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-19-tell-me-more-not-just.html


Summary
This paper was about the use of social signal processing to identify key social behavior elements in a given environment. Social signal processing hopes to be able to classify groups of individuals in different social profiles, and identify the best time to introduce social stimulus when interaction is lacking. This paper attempted to implement these ideas at a museum, as the authors postulate that social interaction at museums constitutes a significant portion of the learning experience for visitors. Their system allowed them to direct social interaction when necessary to improve the experience.

The authors observed 58 small groups of visitors at the Yitxhak Livneh-Astonishment exhibition at the Tel-Aviv Museum of Arts. Data collected included position proximity of group memebers and duration of voice interaction within 1 minute intervals. Proximity was rated as either separated, joined, or left. To the left is a picture of their voice detection application.


Discussion
While I thought this research was interesting, I think the factors that determine social interaction in a particular group should be considered fixed for the group's stay at the museum. The dynamics behind social interaction are complex and deep rooted. In order to truly make use of this data, I feel the authors would have needed to collect a great deal more information in order to identify those deep rooted variables, such as race, age, income, nationality and other demographics. Intervention based solely on proximity and voice activity of group members as observed for 10 minutes is insufficient both to justify intervention with regards to social interaction, or to justify filing a particular group as a specific profile.

Final Project Proposal

For the final project I am planning to implement the web app I presented for the second project. I will most likely revise the design while implementing it, so not all features will necessarily be in the final version. There are several other elements from other people's designs that I liked as well, so I may incorporate those. The goal will be to create a site with as few pages as possible that still does everything necessary to manage the class, while being as intuitive as possible. This is a fairly lofty goal however, so rather than compromise quality, I may choose to leave some pages or features conceptual only for the prototype. Currently I am working by myself, but I may do the project with Angel Narvaez (we are doing the ethnography together).

Paper Reading #18: Personalized user interfaces for product configuration

Title: Personalized user interfaces for product configuration
Authors: Alexander Felfernig, Monika Mandl, Juha Tiihonen, Monika Schubert, Gerhard Leitner
Venue: IUI '10: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary
The authors of this paper are presenting a system for improved product configuration. This is mostly with regards to customers, and the system is designed to increase user satisfaction with the product they decide on. The premise behind this research is that there are frequently too many alternatives to a product for a user to explore all of them and find the one that they want themselves. Instead, the system discussed will allow the user to configure their choices before recommending a product them. While the abstract and introduction are much more general, the products used throughout the paper as examples are mobile phones and the various subscriptions users can purchase for them.

Discussion
While there wasn't a huge amount of actual math, there was a considerable amount of technical jargon and database language in the paper. This made it a bit tedious to read, and difficult to summarize the exact process by which the authors employ their algorithms. Regardless, this sort of work is not new, though the authors claim that knowledge-based configuration is not available in commercial systems. Nearly any major mobile phone website, such as for Verizon or AT&T already has a section that helps users peruse their products in a streamlined fashion.

Paper Reading #17: A natural language interface of thorough coverage by concordance with knowledge bases

Title: A natural language interface of thorough coverage by concordance with knowledge bases
Authors: Yong-Jin Han, Tae-Gil Noh, Seong-Bae Park, Se Young Park, Sang-Jo Lee
Venue: IUI '10: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces


Summary
This paper is about improving the use of natural language interfaces by converting them to a formal language acceptable to the system. While the authors in this paper are talking about a broader range of systems, this work is very similar to search engines such as Google. Essentially, when a user enters a query in natural language, like you would in Google, you are presented with a series of recognized keywords from your query. The user then reviews the system's interpretation of their query to make sure it makes sense. Since the query is now written purely in formal language the system understands, results are much more predictable and accurate.

Discussion
The concepts discussed in this paper are very similar to auto complete on Google searches. However, as seen in the image above, queries made through this system are configured to be very precise, and are probably more intended for knowledge base systems such as Watson. Ultimately it comes down to what sort of database you are searching. In this paper the authors are clearly searching a highly formatted database, where as Google has to search a database that looks more like a heap.


While this was a good idea for these systems, I don't feel like it was a particularly original or creative solution. Most computer scientists, if presented with this problem, would probably come to a similar solution on their own. Additionally, the methods employed by Google and Watson are clearly both excellent already, so to some extent this is recreating the wheel, and not really new research.