Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances

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Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances

• Jeffrey Nichols
• Second Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User
  Interfaces (M3UI)
• Intelligent User Interfaces Conference
• January 9, 2005

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Problem

• Appliances are complex and often hard to use!
  User interfaces are idiosyncratic!

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Personal Universal Controller
Use mobile devices to control all appliances in
the environment

Mobile Devices
Appliances
Key Features Two-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 Functionality
• Each appliance has some unique functions
• Structural Similarity
• Similar 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
sparse similarity
new
previous
new
previous
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

10
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

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Thanks for listening!

• For more information
• http//www.pebbles.hcii.cmu.edu/puc/
• http//www.cs.cmu.edu/jeffreyn/

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Generating Consistent Interfaces for Appliances

• Jeffrey Nichols
• Second Workshop on Multi-User and Ubiquitous User
  Interfaces (M3UI)
• Intelligent User Interfaces Conference
• January 9, 2005

14
Acknowledgements

• Thesis 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

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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, IUI04 allow for
  incorporation of domain-specific renderings