1. Ubiquitous Computing
Computers everywhere

2. Wednesday: presentations
Ideal Concepts
T.H.E. Team
Infused Industries
CommuniCORP
Part 3 DUE!

3. Where are we going?
What happens when the input is your car pulls into the garage, and the output is the heat is turned up in the house, the hallway light is turned on, and the door is unlocked?
How would you design this?
What are the usability metrics?
How can you prototype and evaluate?

4. Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp)
Move beyond desktop machine
Computing is embedded everywhere in the environment
Computing capabilities at any time, any place
Machines sense users presence and act accordingly
A new paradigm??
“everyware”, “off the desktop”, “out of the box”, pervasive, invisible, calm, anytime/anywhere/any place, …

5. Computers become invisible
“The most profound technologies are those that disappear” – Mark Weiser
HCI: new focus on unobtrusiveness, invisibility
How do we make technology “vanish”?
Psychological effect of learning
Distribution of technology
Physical invisibility
Location and scale
Context awareness/automated functions

6. Videos
Other older examples from NTT Docomo
What interfaces did you see?
How did users interact?
What do you think of this vision?

7. Ubicomp is ... Related to: In contrast with: mobile computing
wearable computing
augmented reality
In contrast with:
virtual reality (augmented virtuality)

8. HCI Themes in Ubicomp Natural interaction Context-aware computing
Automated capture and access
Everyday computing

9. Natural Interaction How do input and output change? Input Output
Different form factors, more devices
Input
Towards implicit information
Feeds context-aware computing (later)
Output
Towards distributed, peripheral and ambient displays

10. Natural / implicit input
Integrate into human life
Pen input
Gesture
Speech
Perceptual UI
Tangible UI

11. Device scales Inch PDAs Blackberry & iPhone Voice Recorders
GPS devices
OQO

12. Device scales
Foot
notebooks
tablets
digital paper

13. Device scales Yard electronic whiteboards plasma displays
smart bulletin boards

14. Another take on scales Based on ownership and location body desk room
building
From the GMD Darmstadt web site on I-Land

15. Distributed Displays The Everywhere Display Project at IBM
Microsoft Research Play Anywhere:

16. Peripheral & Ambient Displays
Ambient Orb
Digital Family Portrait

17. What is Context?
Any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity
Who, what, where, when
Why is it important?
information, usually implicit, that applications do not have access to
It’s input that you don’t get in a GUI
General defn, focus is on particular kind of context, important to ubicomp

18. Example: Location services
Outdoor
Global Positioning Satellites (GPS)
wireless/cellular networks
Indoor
electronic tags, RFID
vision
motion detectors, keyboard activity

19. How to Use Context To present relevant information to someone
Mobile tour guide
To perform an action automatically
Print to nearest printer, unlock the right door
To show an action that user can choose
Chat with nearby friends, find comparable products

20. (A few) Context-aware scenarios
Walk into room, lights, audio, etc. adjust to the presence of people
Security, emergency calls based on people in the home, health monitoring
Tracking and finding items in warehouse, alerting when inventory is low (or you need more milk), etc.

21. Automated capture and access
Use of computers to preserve records of the live experience for future use (Abowd & Mynatt 2000)
Compelling applications
Design records
Health care monitoring and therapies
Family memories

22. Technical Challenges Connectivity – almost constant Sensing
How to gracefully handle changes?
Sensing
How to gather useful info? (i.e. location?)
Integration and analysis of data
How to recognize activity and recover when incorrect?
How to function at acceptable speeds?
Scale – both in information and size of displays

23. Challenge of Evaluation
Bleeding edge technology
Novelty
Unanticipated uses
Error recovery
Quantitative metrics
Variety of social implications/issues

24. Social issues Privacy – who has access to data?
How do we make users aware of what technology is present?
Differing perspectives and opinions
Jane likes that the environment is aware she is present, but John doesn’t…

25. Conclusions Interfaces and interactions moving into the world
Real life interaction … noisy, erroneous
Continuous interaction … time sensitive
Design and evaluation get more complex

26. Now what? If you like this course…
ITIS 3150 (currently 3050) Rapid Prototyping and Interface Building
Offered in the fall
Senior project or research
If one isn’t listed, come talk to Dr. Latulipe or me
Courses with HCI component: gaming, visualization, software design
Cognitive Science
Minor: this course is one of the free electives
Paid Research Internship: