Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances

Jeffrey NicholsSecond Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User Interfaces (M3UI)Intelligent User Interfaces ConferenceJanuary 9, 2005

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ProblemAppliances are complex and often hard to use! User interfaces are

idiosyncratic!

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Personal Universal Controller

Specifications

Control

Feedback

Appliances Mobile Devices

Use mobile devices to control all appliances in the environment

Key FeaturesTwo-way communication, Abstract Descriptions, Multiple Platforms, Automatic Interface Generation

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Interface Consistency

PUC devices have a unique opportunity to provide consistency for the user

• Personal device• Used for interacting with most appliances

Three ways that PUC UIs can be made consistent

• With other applications on the same device• With the same appliance interface on a different

device• With past interfaces for similar appliances

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Interface Consistency

PUC devices have a unique opportunity to provide consistency for the user

• Personal device• Used for interacting with most appliances

Three ways that PUC UIs can be made consistent

• With other applications on the same device• With the same appliance interface on a different

device• With past interfaces for similar appliances

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Questions for Consistency

• How can interfaces be consistent when they contain different sets of functions?

• What dimensions of consistency are important and what is their relative importance?

• How often must a function be used before the user will benefit from consistency?

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Different Sets of Functions?

There are a number of issues• Behavioral Similarity

Functions may have the same behavior but have different parameters

• Missing/Extra FunctionalityEach appliance has some unique functions

• Structural SimilaritySimilar functions may be organized differently

Preliminary study of two VCR specifications found examples of all of these issues

• Behavioral and structural issues with common functions like Power and Clock

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Different Sets of Functions?, cont.

new previous

new previous

new previous

sparse similarity

branch similarity significant similarity

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Dimensions of Consistency?

What are dimensions?• Krzysztof gave a number• Visual• Structural• Labels

What is the relative importance?

• Visual vs. Structural

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Usage and Consistency?

• How much must a user interact with an interface before they will benefit from consistency?

• How recently must a user have interacted with an interface before the benefits of consistency degrade?

• Does usage even matter?• Initially I thought that it did, but less convinced now.• Less commonly used functions will always be

relearned, but ensuring consistency could have benefits anyway.

• Picking past interfaces with which to be consistent based on usage is not a big issue (very few combo appliances)

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Conclusion

• There are a lot of questions to answer for multi-device and previous interface consistency

• We hope to answer many of these questions while extending the PUC system to support consistency

• Multi-device and previous interface consistency are related, and a solution to one will help address the other

Thanks for listening!

For more information…http://www.pebbles.hcii.cmu.edu/puc/http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jeffreyn/

Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances

Jeffrey NicholsSecond Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User Interfaces (M3UI)Intelligent User Interfaces ConferenceJanuary 9, 2005

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AcknowledgementsThesis Committee

• Brad A. Myers (chair)• Scott Hudson• John Zimmerman• Dan Olsen Jr.

Funding• National Science

Foundation• Microsoft• General Motors• Intel• Pittsburgh Digital

Greenhouse

Equipment Grants• Mitsubishi (MERL)• VividLogic• Lucent• Lutron• Lantronix• Nokia

PUC Project Members• Kevin Litwack• Thomas K. Harris• Michael Higgins• Joseph Hughes • Roni Rosenfeld• Rajesh Seenichamy• Pegeen Shen• Htet Htet Aung• Mathilde Pignol• Suporn Pongnumkul• Stefanie Shriver• Jeffrey Stylos• Peter Lucas• Thomas Psik

Collaborators & Friends• Naomi Ramos• Desney Tan• Daniel Avrahami• Gaetano Borriello• Laura Dabbish• Andrew Faulring• James Fogarty• Krzysztof Gajos• Darren Gergle• Andy Ko• Amy Nichols• Mick Nichols• Sally Nichols• Trevor Pering• Fleming Seay• Irina Shklovski• Roy Want• Jake Wobbrock• and many others…

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Implementation Approach

Started by hand-designing remote control interfaces for some appliances

Developed interface generation rules based on those interfaces and other HCI heuristics

Built three interface generators for:

• PocketPC• Smartphone• TabletPC

Smart Templates [Nichols, IUI’04] allow for incorporation of domain-specific renderings