Alternate User Interfaces: Ambient

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Alternate User InterfacesAmbient Peripheral
Displays

• INFO.345
• 18 April 2006
• Joseph Jofish Kaye
• Culturally Embedded Computing
• Cornell Information Science
• jofish_at_cornell.edu

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Alternate User Interfaces

• There are many.
• Many many many many.
• So

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Why you should go and look at uhci.org

• Unconventional User Interfaces. Steffi Backhaus
  Ernst Krujiff. http//www.uhci.org/

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Fogscreen
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Audio Spotlight
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The Phantom haptic input and output
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Swimming across the Pacific
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And everything else known to HCI

• Conversational interfaces
• Breath control
• Tongue pointing
• Eyetracking
• Electric field sensing
• Biofeedback (heart rate)
• Biofeedback (EEG)
• Context sensing

• Tangible interfaces
• Haptic interfaces
• Jewelry that beats
• Jewelry that smells
• Jewelry that senses
• Mobile interfaces
• Social interfaces
• Minimal interfaces

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Todays lectureAmbient and Peripheral Interfaces

• With a case study on olfactory display

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Peripheral interfaces

• Or why your ancestors
• werent eaten by lions

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Quick. Is it raining?

• How do you know?

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Ambient interfaces

• Defined.

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Ambient interfaces

• And an argument over definitions.
• I assert theyre used interchangeably in the
  literature. Gilly thinks theres
• a difference, and shes probably right.

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Tangible i.e. inTouchhttp//tangible.media.mit.e
du
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The classic Dangling String
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Intimate Objects

• http//io.infosci.cornell.edu

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Smell an ambient sense

• Ambient media has the property of moving
  seamlessly from the periphery to the focus of our
  attention and back again. Scent is arguably the
  quintessential form of ambient media. It can
  exist quietly in the background, unnoticed by our
  conscious mind, but can bring itself to our
  attention when necessary - such as the invariably
  alarming odor of burning electrical insulation.
  In particular, smell has the potential for use in
  situations where our audio and video channels are
  unavailable, due to physical impairment or
  occupation by other tasks

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Feather, Scent ShakerSupporting simple
intimacy.Rob Strong Bill Gaver, CSCW 1996
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Honey Im Home. In Kaye (2004) Aromatic Output
for HCI.interactions 11(1) JanFeb 48-61
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A sense-driven approach to ambient display

• Case Study Smell

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How Smell Works

• To the whiteboard!

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How We Sense Aroma

• Vibrational
• (Dyson 1938,
• Wright 1954)
• Lock Key
• (Amoore 1963)
• Electron
• tunneling
• (Turin 1996)

?
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Pilot Study I Mint/Anise Mixtures. N9
Odor QuantityWe have 2 bits of precision
Pilot Study II Rose Concentrations. N10
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• Engen Pfaffman 1960 4 bits.
• Everyone else, later Hundreds.
• Why the difference? Naming isnt remembering
• Tip of the nose phenomena Labeling is
  everything
• Fishy-goaty-oily vs. leather
• Complex smells are easier coffee vs. l-carvone

Odor QualityHow Many?
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• Individuals vary significantly in their abilities
  to smell different odors specific anosmia
• An individuals variance over time is as high as
  the varience in the general population. (Stevens
  et. al. 1988)

Varience in individuals and population
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• People adapt to ambient smells in under a minute,
  (Cain 1974)
• A strong smell smelt half an hour ago will effect
  how you perceive smells now. (Hulshoff Pol et. al
  1998)
• Mixing smells has unpredictable results on the
  ability to perceive each.

AdaptationandMixtures
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So
Conclusion 1 Using the strength of a scent to
convey information is unreliable. You must use
different aromas.
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Examples

• inStink
• Dollars Scents
• Scent Reminder
• Honey Im Home
• Scratch Sniff

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inStink
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Dollars Scents

• 1-bit
• NASDAQ
• status

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Scent Reminder
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Honey, Im Home
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If time allows

• Critique Whats wrong with Dollars Scents?
• Exercise Pick a sense. Design an interface that
  takes advantage of it.

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An attempt at conclusions

1. There are more interfaces in heaven and earth,
   Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy
2. Use the full, felt, lived experience of being
   human. All those senses. Just because we arent
   quite sure how to measure it doesnt mean its
   not useful.
3. Dont try and convey information by using
   different levels of smells. Theyre either there
   or theyre not.
4. Find one thing in here that was interesting. Go
   and google it.

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Thank you.

• Joseph Jofish Kaye
• jofish_at_cornell.edu