HUMAN-COMPUTER
INTERACTION
INT211
Overview
Utilizing computers had always demanded the
question of interfacing. The methods by which
human has been interacting with computers has
travelled a long way. The journey still continues
and new designs of technologies and systems
appear more and more every day and the research
in this area has been growing very fast in the last
few decades.
The advances made in last decade in HCI have
almost made it impossible to realize which concept
is fiction and which is and can be real. The thrust in
research and the constant twists in marketing cause
the new technology to become available to
everyone in no time. However, not all existing
technologies are accessible and/or affordable by
public.
Existing HCI Technologies
The complexity of the degree of the involvement of
a human in interaction with a machine is
sometimes invisible compared to the simplicity of
the interaction method itself.
Therefore, in design of HCI, the degree of activity
that involves a user with a machine should be
thoroughly thought. The user activity has three
different levels: physical, cognitive, and affective.
Different methods of interaction can be combined
(Multi-Modal Interaction). The existing physical
technologies for HCI basically can be categorized
by the relative human sense that the device is
designed for. These devices are basically relying on
three human senses: vision, audition, and touch
Vision switch-based or pointing devices.
eg. mice, joysticks, touch screen panels, graphic
tablets, trackballs, and pen-based input devices.
Audition need some kind of speech recognition.
(more difficult to build )
eg. Equipmets with voice command.
Touch Emulates the sense of touch.
eg. Haptic devices (most difficult and costly devices to build )
These kinds of interfaces generate sensations to the
skin and muscles through touch, weight and relative
rigidity . Haptic devices are generally made for
virtual reality or disability assistive applications
The recent methods and technologies in HCI are
now trying to combine former methods of
interaction together and with other advancing
technologies such as networking and animation.
These new advances can be categorized in three
sections: wearable devices, wireless devices, and
virtual devices.
Canesta keyboard
Intelligent and Adaptive HCI
Although the devices used by majority of public are still some kind of
plain command/action setups using not very sophisticated physical
apparatus, the flow of research is directed to design of intelligent and
adaptive interfaces. As mentioned before, it is economically and
technologically crucial to make HCI designs that provide easier, more
pleasurable and satisfying experience for the users. To realize this goal,
the interfaces are getting more natural to use every day.
Evolution of interfaces in note-taking tools is a good example. First
there were typewriters, then keyboards and now touch screen tablet PCs
that you can write on using your own handwriting and they recognize it
change it to text and if not already made, tools that transcript whatever
you say automatically so you do not need to write at all.
One important factor in new generation of
interfaces is to differentiate between using
intelligence in the making of the interface
(Intelligent HCI) or in the way that the interface
interacts with users (Adaptive HCI).
Human Surveillance Systems Visual Object Tracking
Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence
The latest research in HCI field is unmistakably ubiquitous computing
(Ubicomp). The term which often used interchangeably by ambient
intelligence and pervasive computing, refers to the ultimate methods
of human-computer interaction that is the deletion of a desktop and
embedding of the computer in the environment so that it becomes
invisible to humans while surrounding them everywhere hence the
term ambient.
The idea of ubiquitous computing was first introduced by Mark
Weiser during his tenure as chief technologist at Computer Science
Lab in Xerox PARC in 1998. His idea was to embed computers
everywhere in the environment and everyday objects so that people
could interact with many computers at the same time while they are
invisible to them and wirelessly communicating with each other
Ubicomp has also been named the Third Wave of computing. The First
Wave was the mainframe era, many people one computer. Then it was the
Second Wave, one person one computer which was called PC era and now
Ubicomp introduces many computers one person era.
Shows the major trends in
computing.
Unimodal HCI Systems
An interface mainly relies on number and diversity of its inputs
and outputs which are communication channels that enable users
to interact with computer via this interface. Each of the different
independent single channels is called a modality. A system that
is based on only one modality is called unimodal.
Based on the nature of different modalities, they can be divided
into three categories:
1. Visual-Based
Find examples and description for each.
2. Audio-Based
3. Sensor-Based
Multimodal HCI Systems
The term multimodal refers to combination of multiple modalities. In MMHCI
systems, these modalities mostly refer to the ways that the system responds to
the inputs, i.e. communication channels. The definition of these channels is
inherited from human types of communication which are basically his senses:
Sight, Hearing, Touch, Smell, and Taste. The possibilities for interaction with a
machine include but are not limited to these types.
Therefore, a multimodal interface acts as a facilitator of human-computer
interaction via two or more modes of input that go beyond the traditional
keyboard and mouse. The exact number of supported input modes, their types
and the way in which they work together may vary widely from one
multimodal system to another. Multimodal interfaces incorporate different
combinations of speech, gesture, gaze, facial expressions and other non-
conventional modes of input. One of the most commonly supported
combinations of input methods is that of gesture and speech
Assignment 1
1. Find an example of a Unimodal HCI systemfor
each category of and provide description for each.
2. Find 3 examples of Multimodal HCI systems and
give a description for each.
