Application Areas

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Application Areas

• Lecture 17
• Date 6th April

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Overview of Lecture

• Application areas
• CSCW
• Ubiquitous Computing
• What is ubiquitous computing?
• Major themes in ubicomp
• Related topics

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Ubiquitous Computing

• What are the main ideas in Weisers 1991 paper?
• The disappearance of technology
• The opposite of virtual reality
• More humanizing, more human interaction
• More natural interaction, less fiddling
• Wireless, interconnected devices
• Constant, but unobtrusive, availability
• A range of different sizes
• Context-aware behavior
• Privacy considerations must be addressed but no
  solutions proposed
• This work really started several years before
  1991. After more than a decade, we are not much
  closer to dealing with the privacy issues but at
  least now there is a lot of interest in the
  topic.

Ubiquitous Computing
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Ubiquitous Computing
Ubiquitous Computing
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Technology Trends in Ubiquitous Computing

• Displays
• very small (inches) to very large (walls)
• Processors
• cheap, small, dedicated, microprocessors
• Low Power
• small batteries, solar (?)
• Wireless
• Wireless ethernet, infrared, mobile standards,
  Bluetooth (in-room), in-building, metropolitan
• Operating systems
• Linux on a chip, Windows CE,
• Packaging
• non-conventional devices

Ubiquitous Computing
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Ubiquitous Computing

• 3 major themes in ubiquitous computing
• Desire for natural interfaces
• Need to be context-aware
• Automate capture and access

Ubiquitous Computing
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Desire for Natural Interfaces

• Physical interactions will be less like current
  desktop/keyboard/mouse display paradigms, more
  like real human interactions
• More natural forms of communication
• Speech
• Handwriting
• Gestures
• When used for recognition-based tasks,
• new and more types of mistakes are introduced
• Eliminating errors may not be possible e.g.,
  computer handwriting recognition will never be
  perfect
• Error handling of recognition-based interfaces is
  a major area of research

Ubiquitous Computing Themes
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Need to be Context-Aware

• Context refers to the physical and social
  situation in which computational devices are
  embedded
• A goal of context-aware computing is to acquire
  and utilize information about the context of a
  device and provide services that are appropriate
  to the particular people, place, time, events,
  etc.
• Example A mobile phone will always vibrate at a
  concert and never beep/ring in a concert, if the
  system can know the location of the phone and the
  schedule of the concert

Ubiquitous Computing Themes
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Need to be Context-Aware

• The five Ws can be used to define context
• Who identity of a particular user
• What interpretation of human activity
• Where location of user
• When time of activity, passage of time
• Why reason for a person doing something

Ubiquitous Computing Themes
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Need to be Context-Aware

• Most common -gt Location-Aware Computing
• location-based action
• nearby local printer, doctor
• nearby remote phone
• directions/maps
• location-based information
• real
• persons location
• history/sales/events
• virtual
• walkthrough
• story of city
• augmented
• touring machine

Ubiquitous Computing Themes
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Automate Capture Access

• Much time is spent recording events and then
  trying to remember important pieces of
  information from those events
• Most systems have separate capture and access
  phases e.g., Lecture Browser focuses on the
  capture presentations with attention to capturing
  arbitrary program interactions and
  production-quality video capture from multiple
  sources

Ubiquitous Computing Themes
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Automate Capture Access

• Challenges
• Capture most common application areas are in
  meeting support education/training. Other
  possible application areas
• Recording of special events
• During collaborative design activities
• Much of the capture is for raw streams of
  information that are captured mainly for direct
  playback. It is often useful to derive
  information to provide a greater understanding of
  the live event

Ubiquitous Computing Themes
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Automate Capture Access

• Challenges
• Access a number of playback activities need to
  be provided
• While real-time access is the most common, other
  methods are required
• Versioning and time-based interactions are issues
  in the access phase
• As systems move from personalized to more public
  settings, privacy concerns for both capture and
  access increase

Ubiquitous Computing Themes
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Other Related Topics

• Augmented Reality
• Tangible Interfaces
• Wearable Interfaces

Related Topics
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Augmented Reality

• Augmented reality (AR) refers to computer
  displays that add virtual information to a user's
  sensory perceptions.
• Augmented reality is an environment that includes
  both virtual reality and real-world elements.
• Example an AR user might wear translucent
  goggles through these, he could see the real
  world, as well as computer-generated images
  projected on top of that world

Related Topics
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Augmented Reality

• Most AR research focuses on "see-through"
  devices, usually worn on the head, that overlay
  graphics and text on the user's view of his or
  her surroundings

Related Topics
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Augmented Reality
Related Topics
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Augmented Reality
Related Topics
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Tangible Interfaces

• Tangible interfaces provide physical form to
  digital information and computation, facilitating
  the direct manipulation of bits
• They employ physical objects, surfaces, and
  spaces as tangible embodiments of digital
  information.

Related Topics
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Tangible Interfaces

• These include foreground interactions with
  graspable objects and augmented surfaces,
  exploiting the human senses of touch and
  kinesthesia.
• Background information displays use "ambient
  media" -- ambient light, sound, airflow, and
  water movement-- that communicate
  digitally-mediated senses of activity and
  presence at the periphery of human awareness.

Related Topics
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Tangible Interfaces

• Triangles
• When the pieces connect together, they can
  trigger digital events. These events can
  influence the progress of a non-linear story, or
  allow users to organize media elements in order
  to create their own story space.

Related Topics
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Wearable Interfaces

• Wearable computers has focused on making it
  easier to take the desktop PC along
• The physical nature of the space and task is
  reflected in the design of the hardware and the
  user interaction modalities
• Computers on body
• track body relative movements
• monitor person
• train person
• Wearables will need to become much
• smaller and socially designed

Related Topics
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Towards Everyday Computing

• Activities rarely have a clear beginning and end
• Interruption is expected
• Multiple activities operate concurrently
• Time is an important discriminator
• Associative models of information are required

Related Topics
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Ubiquitous Computing Challenges

• Evaluating Ubicomp systems
• Finding a human need
• Evaluating in the context of authentic use
• Task-centric evaluation techniques are
  inappropriate
• Social issues

Related Topics
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Summary of Lecture

• What is ubiquitous computing?
• Major themes in ubicomp
• Desire for natural interfaces
• Need to be context-aware
• Automate capture and access
• Related topics
• Augmented Reality
• Tangible Interfaces
• Wearable Interfaces

Summary
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Terms of Reference

• Weiser, M. (1991) The Computer for the 21st
  Century
• Ishii, H. (2004) Bringing clay and sand into
  digital design continuous tangible user
  interfaces
• Abowd, G. Mynatt, E. (2000) Charting Past,
  Present and Future Research in Ubiquitous
  Computing
• Scholtz, J. (2001) Ubiquitous Computing Goes
  Mobile
• Milgram Kishino (1994)  A Taxonomy of Mixed
  Reality Visual Display
• Benyon, D. et al (2005) Designing Interactive
  Systems

References