More Than Screen Deep Toward Every-Citizen Interfaces to the Nation's Information Infrastructure (1997) / Chapter Skim
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Position Papers: On Interface Specifics
Position Papers: On Interface Specifics
Pages 243-306
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. More conventionally, our national information infrastructure today includes tens of thousands of public and school libraries all across the country.
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. As the above examples illustrate, the existing information infrastructure often functions without calling itself to our attention.
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What computer interfaces are most appropriate for coupling into a large amount of unconscious information processing? Which ones take a long time to learn but are worth the effort (analogous perhaps to piano playing)
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Our emphasis at Mitre Corporation has been on investigating technologies and tools that enable more effective and efficient information interfaces for a variety of application areas, including command and control, intelligence analysis, and education and training. As a consequence of our experience, we believe we should aim not to Cifizell input India ~1 Output Akdu FIGURE 1 Intelligent interfaces.
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In supporting information access, our efforts have focused on multimedia analysis (in particular, message understanding and video analysis) , including its segmentation into atomic units, extraction of objects, facts and relationships, and summarization into compact form.
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. Because they affect all who interact with computers, user interfaces are perhaps the single area of computing that can most radically alter the ease, efficiency, and effectiveness of human-computer interactions.
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1993. Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces.
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· Be more able to help build knowledge as opposed to merely process data. · Be more capable of displaying information in richer forms both visually and auditorially.
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· Communications systems (standards, hardware, and software to help participants communicate better with each other as well as with computers; natural-language interfaces spoken and written and translation systems to widen the opportunities of involvement to more people; hardware and software solutions for increasing bandwidth and improving the reliability, security, privacy, and scalability of existing communications infrastructure; etc.~. · Understanding of understanding (information and knowledgebuilding applications; understandings about how people create context and meaning, transform data into information, create knowledge for themselves, and build wisdom; software to help facilitate these processes; standards to help transmit and share information and knowledge with connections intact; etc.~.
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They are increasingly communicating with others and creating meaningful things rather than merely "viewing" and watching. The next 100 million computer users (who may begin using computers over the next 3 years)
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WHAT IS INTERACTIVITY? When I use the word "interactive" I do not mean what has become the standard industry definition of dynamic media or the ability to make choices when using computer programs.
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256 MORE THAN SCREEN DEEP ucts or experiences do this now, which is the main reason why the CDROM industry fell apart over the past few years (the products offered little to do that was interesting)
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Present tools commonly available on the market such as spreadsheets, word processors, databases, and graphics programs are hardly adequate for representing or visualizing complex relationshipships and informing communications. The hardware required for better-performing visualization systems includes displays that are high resolution, portable, and low power so that they are more easily used where needed.
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This is not to say that interfaces shouldn't take advantage of their unique capabilities indeed, they need to do so more than currently but they also need to relate to each other where possible and it should be recognized that printed interfaces such as newspapers, classifieds, catalogs, documentation, and directories are in just as dire need of evolution as technological ones. I am certainly not calling for computer screens to look like little notebooks of paper with spiral binds nor print paper to look like current computer interfaces with pull-down menus.
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will not be as willing to change their approach to problems and their interaction with devices as the enthusiasts and professionals who comprise the present base of computer users. Issues of language, gesture, understanding, privacy, approach, civility, and "life" are not consistent throughout the world and wonderfully so and must be discovered and documented.
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But a more realistic view recognizes the centrality of an "interspace" that is inhabited by multiple people, workstations, servers, and other devices in a complex web of interactions. The hardest task in creating an every-citizen interface will be the design of appropriate theories, models, and representations to do justice to the potential richness of this interaction space.
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But we have not yet developed the conceptual and computational tools to make it easy to bring collaboration into the mainstream of applications. When I work with my research group on a joint paper, we use sophisticated word processors, graphics programs, and the like, but our coordination is based on generic e-mail and calendars and often fails to help us at the places where breakdowns occur.
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Today, we are all familiar with the virtuality of the standard graphical user interface, with its windows, icons, folders, and the like. Although these virtual objects are loosely grounded in analogies with the physical world, they exist in a unique world of their own, with its special logic and potentials for action by the user.
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. It is at the heart of the current desktop metaphor and most of what has been done with graphic user interfaces.
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, Introduction to the Language/Action Perspective, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems 6:2 (April 1988)
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The next section describes the time rate of change of computer technology, indicating what might be expected in the form of technology from the computer industry as well as defining a new class of computers the wearable computer. The third section describes the importance of a variety of modalities of interaction with wearable computers.
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These researchers also observed that computer classes differ in physical dimensions and price by roughly 1.5 orders of magnitude (e.g., approximately a factor of 30~. In addition, it was observed that, as each computer class evolves, new members of the class are expected to have increased capacity and functionality.
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One can speculate on the emergence of a new class of computers called "wearable computers." Wearable computers will weigh less than a few ounces, operate for months or years on a single battery, and have esthetically pleasing shapes that can adorn various parts of the body. Pagers and electronic watches (complete with calculator and memory to store phone numbers/memos)
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To maximize the effectiveness of wearable systems in mobile computing environments, interface design must be carefully matched with user tasks. By constructing mental models of user actions, interface elements may be chosen and tuned to meet the software and hardware requirements of specific procedures.
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Following is a partial list of those challenges: · User interface models. What is the appropriate set of metaphors for providing mobile access to information (i.e., the next "desktop" or "spreadsheet"?
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Inaccuracies produce user frustrations. In addition, most of these modalities require extensive computing resources, which will not be available in low-weight, low-energy wearable computers.
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We must make fundamental changes in the direction of computer design if the true have-nots of cyberspace are not to be those rare individuals who do not feel instantly comfortable clattering over mounds of twisted metallic wreckage in other words, ordinary people. Somewhere along the line, many technology designers lost track of the real goal: empowering users.
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POWER USERS VERSUS EXPERT USERS Most people want to be seen as power users, but then we have the real thing. Power users typically consist of bipedal, testosterone-soaked life forms between the ages of 18 and 39.
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My cohorts and I quickly escaped, but the women were generally not so lucky.) Today, two-thirds of personal computer users are women, according to a Logitec Inc.
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All these teams held a common understanding of who their users were and chief in that understanding was a rock-solid belief that users were not like themselves. Ten years later we are expecting ordinary citizens traveling on the World Wide Web to follow a naming convention so foreign to human experience as to be completely incomprehensible: http://www.goliath.
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Our interfaces to the national information infrastructure must be accessible to ordinary people. The Star-Lisa-Macintosh interface made a fundamental shift in design away from the earlier "black cave" interfaces.
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Which of the design principles for early graphical user interfaces represented "training wheels," and which represented needs, wants, and limitations of ordinary citizens that are just as important today as they were then? Since the advent of those early graphical user interfaces, users have faced increasing complexity.
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Who does what study is probably relatively unimportant. What is critical is that it become a matter of public policy that we make our national information infrastructure accessible to ordinary citizens as well as the technologically gifted.
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(1992~. PC's and People Poll, A National Compatibility Study of the Human Experience with Hardware, sponsored by Logitec Inc., 6505 Kaiser Drive, Fremont, CA 94555, (510)
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Advances in speech technology are of critical importance to the goal of an every-citizen interface to the national information infrastructure (NII)
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It follows that progress in developing these systems requires the continued study of how people interact with machines using speech. Such studies will highlight the limitations of speech recognition technology in the context of system use and focus research efforts on ways to overcome these limitations.
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The difficulty of incorporating linguistic knowledge into the dominant research paradigm stands as a major stumbling block to progress. Accurate speech recognition requires the integration of diverse acoustic cues, such as stop bursts, format movements, changes in pitch and comparison of acoustic features across segments.
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This workshop recognizes the importance of interface technologies, as do an increasing number of NSF initiatives in human language technology sponsored jointly by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and other defense agencies. The growing support for interface research is bringing new researchers and new ideas into the field.
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ON INTERFACE SPECIFICS 283 Education, technical report no.
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I take the NII to be the public medium supporting all forms of interaction between people and machines that do not require the transport of physical matter. A user's interactions with the NII are accomplished through displays, interaction devices, and controlling software, which together comprise a user interface.
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I hesitate to use the word "programmable" here to avoid the implication that this should involve a conventional programming language, such as lava, or even the simpler languages provided by current systems for enduser programming. Responsive Large enough quantitative differences in performance can make for qualitative differences in how a user interface feels and how it is used.
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Multimedia Background Interpreting "multimedia" broadly, I see two major research subgoals here: developing user interfaces that support real-time interaction with true three-dimensional (3D) input/output devices (i.e., virtual environments or virtual worlds)
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How can we map abstract task domains effectively to a 3D environment in which we can visualize and manipulate objects in the domain? How can we take advantage of the richness of 3D gesture to reduce our reliance on icons to express actions in current user interfaces?
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Adaptive multimedia user interfaces should be able to design and present information to people through multiple output media and understand user input provided through multiple input media. They should be able to adapt to the user's work mode, be it direct manipulation and exploration or passive observation.
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· Resources. Model the generation and input resources available to the system, making it possible for the system to choose between different ways of providing or obtaining information, based on what displays and interaction devices are or will be available.
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We need to build user interfaces that exploit this rich and constantly changing combination of peripherals. Issues Drawing an analogy to window management, the term environment management has been used (MacIntyre and Feiner, 1996)
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, and augmented reality. Collaborative Background User interfaces should support collaborative problem solving and interaction among multiple people and computers cooperating in the same task or in coordinated tasks.
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How can they incorporate multimodal interaction into the programming user interface itself? How can we generalize demonstrational programs in a way that minimizes the amount of end-user involvement while maximizing the places where the system guesses right?
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One kind of instructable interface is based on the metaphor of an "agent" that carries out a task on the user's behalf, often using knowledge and abilities that the user may not have herself. There has been a fair amount of heated debate in the human-computer interface community, pitting proponents of agent-based user interfaces against those who favor direct-manipulation user interfaces.
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Responsive Background The goal is to build systems that can utilize the power available throughout the NII in a way that doesn't compromise the responsiveness of the user interface. Issues Resources needed to make a responsive system include not only network bandwidth and computational power but also appropriately sized and sited storage.
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have an essentially unlimited potential to confuse and intimidate. While much of this potential can be mitigated through better user interface design, there is no substitute for users having the right skills and mindset.
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1996. Future Multimedia User Interfaces.
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and the global information infrastructure (GII) , attention has turned to the issue of information equality and universal access.
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There are, however, approaches to provide additional access or access for additional populations that are not currently practical (e.g., building $2,000 dynamic braille displays into every terminal or kiosk)
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These different environments will place constraints on the type of physical and sensory input and output techniques that work (e.g., it is difficult to use a keyboard when walking; it is difficult and dangerous to use visual displays when driving a car; speech input and output, which work fine in a car, may not be usable in a shared office environment, a noisy mall, a meeting, or a library)
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· As we develop very small pocket and wearable devices for circumstances in which it is difficult to use a full-sized keyboard or even a large number of keys, we will have developed techniques that can be used by individuals with some types of physical disabilities. · When we create interfaces that can be used by someone whose hands are occupied, we will have systems that are accessible to people who cannot use their hands.
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Interfaces will be required that can take advantage of fine motor movements and three-dimensional gestures when a user's situation or abilities allow but can also be operated by using speech, keyboard, or other input techniques when this is necessary because of the environment, the user's activities, or any motor constraints. · Straight forwardness and ease of use.
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These include keyboard or speech EXAMPLE: USING A UNI-LIST-BASED ARCHITECTURE AS PART OF THE INTERFACE One approach to device design that would support this type of flexibility is the Uni-List architecture. By maintaining a continually updated listing of all the information items currently available to the user, as well as all the actions or commands available, it is possible to provide a very flexible and adjustable user interface relatively easily.
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Instead of the information being spoken, however, it could be sent to the individual's dynamic braille display. ADDITIONAL BENEFITS OF FLEXIBLE, MODALITY INDEPENDENT ARCHITECTURES AND DATA FORMATS The two key underlying strategies for providing more universal access are input and display flexibility and the companion availability of information in sensory/modality-independent or parallel form.
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agents using electronic text form. · Display flexibility.
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SUMMARY Through the incorporation of presentation-independent data structures, an available information/command menu, and several easy-to-program selection options, it is possible to create interfaces that begin to approximate the anytime-anywhere-anyone (AAA) interface goal.
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; · Voice-tolerant speech recognition (ability to deal with disarthric and deaf speech) ; · Dynamic tactile displays (two- and three-dimensional tactile and force feedback 3D)
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