1. Mark W. Newman Trends in HCI mwnewman@umich.edu
University of Michigan School of Information
University of Michigan
Human Factors Engineering Short Course
2011 1

2. What does HCI study?
People
Design
Task
Technology

3. What does HCI study? People Design Task Technology What do people do?
How can we support them?
Design
Task
Technology

4. What does HCI study? People Design Task Technology
How do people interact?
What are the human constraints?
Design
Task
Technology

5. What does HCI study? People Design Task Technology
How do advances in technology expand the kinds of tasks that can be supported?
Task
Technology

6. What does HCI study? People Design Task Technology
How do we use our understanding of people, their tasks, and technical capabilities to design better systems?
Design
Task
Technology

7. People Trends: Wider Social Context
Classic HCI
Design
Technology
People
Task
CSCW
Social Computing

8. Task Trends: New Contexts, New Activities
People
Design
Technology
Task
Image credits

9. TechTrends: Bigger, Smaller, More Pervasive
Walls, Tables
Smaller
Mobile, wearables
Multiple Devices
Multi-display environments, tangible computing
Context-aware computing
Worn, carried, or embedded sensing used as an interaction input
People
Design
Technology
Task

10. Sidebar: How long do innovations take from concept to widespread adoption?
[Fenn10]

11. Sidebar: Adoption of the Mouse
From concept to mass market: years
1995: Win95 launched
1973: Work begins on Xerox Alto
1978: Xerox Star goes to “market”
1984: Apple Macintosh launched
1965: Doug Engelbart creates first mouse
1969: Engelbart ‘s “mother of all demos”
Adapted from [Buxton07]

12. HCI Technology Drivers
Computing: Cheaper, smaller, faster
Networking: Ubiquitous and faster
Displays: Cheaper and bigger
Displays: Cheaper and smaller
Sensing: Cheaper and smaller
Sensing: Ubiquitous

13. Large Displays: Multitouch
Video:
Large multitouch screen interaction
Bimanual direct manipulation
Multiple simultaneous users
[Han05]

14. Very Large Displays: OptiPortals
30-100M Pixels; used for scientific visualization
[Pieper09]

15. Large Displays: Tabletops
Encourage multi-user interaction
Integrate with new environments
Raise new issues
Multi-user coordination
Rotation-independence
Private/public data sharing
Tabletops are interesting because they’re more democratic in a way. No perspective is privileged, everything is in reach. It’s not a coincidence that tables feature prominently in pretty much every meeting room you’ve ever been in. Also in every dining room, restaurant, etc. This is a great form for bringing people together. What happens when that becomes interactive? It’s not just taking a wall mounted display and tipping it over. New interactions are needed, and new contexts are supported.
Commercial vendors:
Circle 12
Smart Tech
[ITS 2010]

16. Large Displays: Applications
Personal
Workspaces
Group Sharing
Tight
Collaboration
Peripheral
Information

17. Large Displays: Usability Issues
Control from a distance
Losing track of the cursor
Window management
Task management
Configuration problems
Leverage the periphery
Multi-user coordination

18. Large Display Input: Selecting and Directing
Drag and Pop
Extending familiar interactions to a new platform
General problem with large displays: how do you work with things that are far apart?
[Baudisch03]

19. Large Display Input: Cameraphones
Most people already have an interactive device with them
Use built-in capabilities of “personal interactors” to control public devices
Selection and control at a distance
[Ballagas05]

20. Large Display Interaction: Sensing distance
Use precise location sensing to determine user’s proximity
Different functionality based on distance
[Vogel04]

21. Tabletop Interaction: Rotation and Personal Space
There is no longer a “privileged” vantage point
Need to distinguish users’ content, especially when sharing
[Shen06]

22. Small Devices: NanoTouch
Video:
[Baudisch09]

23. Wearable Computing [Mann97]
A lot less geeky than it used to be. “Normal” people might actually wear the gear in the lower right.
Wearable Computing: A first step toward "Personal Imaging" IEEE Computer, Vol.30, No.3 (summary of my last 20 years as a "photographic cyborg").
Wearable Computing
[Mann97]

24. Wearable Computing: Skinput
Watch Video:
[Harrison10]

25. Small Device Usability Issues
Information density
Selection target size
Text entry
Gesture set size
Gesture set learnability
Integration with larger devices
Multimodal interaction

26. Context-Aware Computing: The Active Badge (1992)
[Want92]

27. Context-Aware Computing: Cyberguide (1997)
First (of many) location-aware tour guides
Client detects position through GPS or IR
[Abowd97]

28. Location-Aware Computing
Now in stores!
Location-awareness has entered the mainstream

29. Location Aware Applications: Navigation for the Visually Impaired
Video:
[Stewart08]

30. Activity-Aware Computing: UbiFit Garden
Walking
Running
Cycling
Playing Soccer
Doing Yoga …
Running, cycling, walking.
[Consolvo08]

31. Activity-Aware Computing: The CareNet Display
Monitor loved-one’s activity
Broadcast awareness to support network
Support for aging in place
[Consolvo04]

32. Activity-Awareness: Detecting Interruptibility
[Fogarty07]

33. Context-aware computing: HCI research issues
Information sharing and privacy
Configuring and monitoring implicit interactions
Intelligibility of system inference
Integration of personal, public, and infrastructure devices
Training and personalization

34. TechTrends: Bigger, Smaller, More Pervasive
Walls, Tables
Smaller
Mobile, wearables
Multiple Devices
Multi-display environments, tangible computing
Context-aware computing
Worn, carried, or embedded sensing used as an interaction input
Design
Technology
People
Task

35. Summary HCI evolves New technology drives Wider focus on “people”
Wider focus on “tasks”
New technical capabilities
New technology drives
New interactions
New tasks
New questions about human needs & capabilities
Design
Technology
People
Task

36. References
[Abowd97] G.D. Abowd, C.G. Atkeson, J. Hong, S. Long, R. Kooper, and M. Pinkerton, “Cyberguide: a mobile context-aware tour guide,” Wireless Networks., vol. 3, 1997, pp [Ballagas05] R. Ballagas, M. Rohs, and J.G. Sheridan, “Sweep and point and shoot: phonecam-based interactions for large public displays,” CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, Portland, OR, USA: ACM, 2005, pp [Baudisch09] P. Baudisch and G. Chu, “Back-of-device interaction allows creating very small touch devices,” Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, Boston, MA, USA: ACM, 2009, pp [Baudisch03] P. Baudisch, E. Cutrell, D. Robbins, and M. Czerwinski, “Drag-and-pop and drag-and-pick: Techniques for accessing remote screen content on touch-and pen-operated systems,” Human-computer interaction: INTERACT'03; IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 1st-5th September 2003, Zurich, Switzerland, 2003, p. 57. [Buxton07] W. Buxton, Sketching user experiences: Getting the design right and the right design, Morgan Kaufmann, [Consolvo04] S. Consolvo, P. Roessler, and B.E. Shelton, “The carenet display: Lessons learned from an in home evaluation of an ambient display,” PROCEEDINGS OF THE 6TH INT'L CONFERENCE ON UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING: UBICOMP '04, 2004, pp [Consolvo08] S. Consolvo, D.W. McDonald, T. Toscos, M.Y. Chen, J. Froehlich, B. Harrison, P. Klasnja, A. LaMarca, L. LeGrand, R. Libby, I. Smith, and J.A. Landay, “Activity sensing in the wild: a field trial of ubifit garden,” Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, Florence, Italy: ACM, 2008, pp [Fenn10] J. Fenn. "2010 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle is Here." Mastering the Hype Cycle blog. Sept. 7, [ITS10] ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces Conference. Saarbrücken, Germany. November 7-10, [Fogarty07] J. Fogarty and S.E. Hudson, “Toolkit support for developing and deploying sensor-based statistical models of human situations,” Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, San Jose, California, USA: ACM, 2007, pp [Han05] J. Y. Han. "Low-Cost Multi-Touch Sensing through Frustrated Total Internal Reflection." In Proceedings of the 18th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Seatttle, WA, USA

37. References
[Harrison10] C. Harrison, D. Tan, and D. Morris, “Skinput: appropriating the body as an input surface,” Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, Atlanta, Georgia, USA: ACM, 2010, pp [Mann97] S. Mann, “Wearable Computing: A First Step Toward Personal Imaging,” IEEE Computer, vol. 30, 1997, pp [Pieper09] G. W. Pieper, et al. "Visualizing Science: The OptIPuter Project." SciDAC Review 12. Spring [Shen06] C. Shen, K. Ryall, C. Forlines, A. Esenther, K. Everitt, M. Hancock, M. R. Morris, F. Vernier, D. Wigdor, and M. Wu. "Interfaces, Interaction Techniques and User Experience on Direct-Touch Horizontal Surfaces." IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Sept/Oct 2006, [Stewart08] J. Stewart, S. Bauman, M. Escobar, J.Hilden, K. Bihani, and M. W. Newman. "Accessible Contextual Information for Urban Orientation." In Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Ubiquitous computing (UbiComp 2008) [Note]. Seoul, Korea (2008) [Vogel04] D. Vogel and R. Balakrishnan, “Interactive public ambient displays: transitioning from implicit to explicit, public to personal, interaction with multiple users.” In Proceedings of the 17th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, Santa Fe, NM, USA: ACM, 2004, pp [Want92] R. Want, A. Hopper, V. Falcão, and J. Gibbons, “The active badge location system,” ACM Trans. Inf. Syst., vol. 10, 1992, pp