Alternate User Interfaces: Ambient & Peripheral Displays INFO April 2006 Joseph ‘Jofish’ Kaye Culturally Embedded Computing Cornell Information Science

Alternate User Interfaces There are many. Many many many many. So:

Why you should go and look at uhci.org Unconventional User Interfaces. Steffi Backhaus & Ernst Krujiff.

Fogscreen

Audio Spotlight

The Phantom: haptic input and output

Swimming across the Pacific

And everything else known to HCI Conversational interfaces Breath control Tongue pointing Eyetracking Electric field sensing Biofeedback (heart rate) Biofeedback (EEG) Context sensing Tangible interfaces Haptic interfaces Jewelry that beats Jewelry that smells Jewelry that senses Mobile interfaces Social interfaces Minimal interfaces

Today’s lecture: Ambient and Peripheral Interfaces With a case study on olfactory display

Peripheral interfaces Or why your ancestors weren’t eaten by lions

Quick. Is it raining? How do you know?

Ambient interfaces Defined.

Ambient interfaces And an argument over definitions. I assert: they’re used interchangeably in the literature. Gilly thinks there’s a difference, and she’s probably right.

Tangible: i.e. inTouch

The classic: Dangling String

Intimate Objects

Smell: an ambient sense Ambient media has the property of moving seamlessly from the periphery to the focus of our attention and back again. Scent is arguably the quintessential form of ambient media. It can exist quietly in the background, unnoticed by our conscious mind, but can bring itself to our attention when necessary - such as the invariably alarming odor of burning electrical insulation. In particular, smell has the potential for use in situations where our audio and video channels are unavailable, due to physical impairment or occupation by other tasks

Feather, Scent & Shaker: Supporting simple intimacy. Rob Strong & Bill Gaver, CSCW 1996

Honey I’m Home. In Kaye (2004) Aromatic Output for HCI. interactions 11(1) Jan+Feb 48-61

A sense-driven approach to ambient display Case Study: Smell

How Smell Works To the whiteboard!

How We Sense Aroma Vibrational (Dyson 1938, Wright 1954) Lock & Key (Amoore 1963) Electron tunneling (Turin 1996) ?

Odor Quantity: We have ≤2 bits of precision Pilot Study I: Mint/Anise Mixtures. N=9 Pilot Study II: Rose Concentrations. N=10

Odor ‘Quality’ How Many? Engen & Pfaffman 1960: 4 bits. Everyone else, later: Hundreds. Why the difference? Naming isn’t remembering: ‘Tip of the nose’ phenomena: Labeling is everything: “Fishy-goaty-oily” vs. leather Complex smells are easier: coffee vs. l-carvone

Varience in individuals and population Individuals vary significantly in their abilities to smell different odors: specific anosmia An individual’s variance over time is as high as the varience in the general population. (Stevens et. al. 1988)

Adaptation and Mixtures People adapt to ambient smells in under a minute, (Cain 1974) A strong smell smelt half an hour ago will effect how you perceive smells now. (Hulshoff Pol et. al 1998) Mixing smells has unpredictable results on the ability to perceive each.

So… Conclusion #1: Using the strength of a scent to convey information is unreliable. You must use different aromas.

Examples inStink Dollars & Scents Scent Reminder Honey I’m Home Scratch & Sniff

inStink

Dollars & Scents 1 -bit NASDAQ status

Scent Reminder

Honey, I’m Home

If time allows… Critique: What’s wrong with Dollars & Scents? Exercise: Pick a sense. Design an interface that takes advantage of it.

An attempt at conclusions 1.There are more interfaces in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy 2.Use the full, felt, lived experience of being human. All those senses. Just because we aren’t quite sure how to measure it doesn’t mean it’s not useful. 3.Don’t try and convey information by using different levels of smells. They’re either there or they’re not. 4.Find one thing in here that was interesting. Go and google it.

Thank you. Joseph ‘Jofish’ Kaye