Paper Reading# 11: Hands-on math: a page-based multi-touch and pen desktop for technical work and problem solving

Reference Information

Title: Hands-On Math: A page-based multi-touch and pen desktop for technical work and problem solving

Names of authors: Robert Zeleznik, Andrew Bragdon, Ferdi Adeputra, Hsu-Sheng Ko

Presentation venue: UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology

Summary:

Students, professionals and engineers have to choose between flexible, free-form input of pencil and paper and the computational power of Computer Algebra Systems (CAS). There is no method of interaction or technology that incorporates the two into something that's one easy-to-use, yet powerful, thus reducing the barriers in accessing computational algebra systems while solving math problem. Hands-On Math is a multi-touch and pen-based system which attempts to unify these approaches by providing virtual paper that is enhanced to recognize mathematical notations as a means of providing in situ access to the CAS functionality. It uses Microsoft Surface that runs on a tabletop screen and StarPad SDK to convert handwritten mathematical equations to digital format. Pages can be created and organized on a large pannable desktop and mathematical expressions can be computed, graphed and manipulated using a set of uni and bi-manual interactions which facilitate rapid exploration by eliminating tedious and error prone transcription tasks. Analysis of a qualitative pilot evaluation indicated the potential of the approach and highlighted the issues with the novel techniques used.

Discussion:

The idea of incorporating hand gestures and solving of math equations is brilliant. I have myself been in such situations before, and have been lazy to plug in the equations into CAS. Writing the equations on smart whiteboards and using gesture recognition to recognize the equations and converting them to digital format will make the task very easy and save a lot of time.

Paper Reading #10: PhoneTouch: a technique for direct phone interaction on surfaces

Reference Information:

Title: PhoneTouch: a technique for direct phone interaction on surfaces

Authors: Dominik Schmidt, Fadi Chehimi, Enrico Rukzio, Hans Gellersen

Conference: User Interface Software and Technology 2010

Summary:

This paper talks about PhoneTouch - a novel technique for integration of mobile

phones and interactive surfaces. The technique enables use

of phones to select targets on the surface by direct touch, facilitating

for instance pick&drop-style transfer of objects between

phone and surface. The technique is based on separate

detection of phone touch events by the surface, which determines

location of the touch, and by the phone, which contributes

device identity. The device-level observations are

merged based on correlation in time. In the paper, the authors describe a proof of-

concept implementation of the technique, using vision for

touch detection on the surface including discrimination of

finger versus phone touch and acceleration features for detection

by the phone.

(Fig. PhoneTouch enables direct phone interaction on surfaces alongside conventional multi-touch.)

Discussion:

I think the idea of using a collaborative touch surface with phones is really interesting. It can be used in home as well as in office. In office, documents can be drag-n-dropped on the surface to share them with everyone, at home pictures and movies can be shared by dragging them from the phone onto the the collaborative surface. I believe this technology has already been put to use in developing certain multimedia application, iphone apps etc.

Book Reading #20 - Opening Skinner's Box

Author: Lauren Slator

Chapter 5: Quieting the Mind

Summary:

In this chapter, author Lauren Slater talks about Leon Festinger's theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance can be defined as the phenomenon in which people alter their thoughts and actions to match their surroundings and circumstances. The author mentions some of the Festinger's experiments in which people believed that a massive flood would come on December 21, 1954. In another experiment, he had people lie for $1 and for $20.

Major part of this chapter talks about a woman named Linda Santo who claims that her daughter is a saint. She claimed that her daughter was a victim soul and was born to take the pains for others' sins. Interviews with Linda Santo give more information and raise some questions about cognitive dissonance.

Discussion:

I thought that some of questions raised and facts stated in this chapter were unclear and ambiguous as compared to the other chapters. However, the topic of cognitive dissonance presented by the author was extremely fascinating. I believe that the area has not received much attention and more experiments need to be conducted to better understand the concept of Cognitive Dissonance.

Book Reading #19 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 6: The Girl in Her Community

Summary

In this chapter, the author talks about the role of the girl in the community. She goes on to different between two groups - Aumaga and Aualuma. Aumuga is a group of men who do the heavy work of the village and perform an important function of forming relations between two villages while Aualuma is a group of young girls, wives of untitled men and widows. They are village hostesses and provide help at certain meetings for the wives of matais.

The author goes on to explain certain taboos. She discusses the two types of woman's fonos - the ones that follow and other ones who precede the communal work and the ceremonial fonos.

Discussion

It's interesting to know about the woman's potion in the Samoan community. It seems like women don't enjoy the freedom that they do in the developed cultures. There are certain taboos and customs that restrict their behavior. It would be interesting to know if the position of the woman in Somoan society has changed today.

Book Reading #18 - Design of Everyday Things

Author: Donald Norman
Chapter 6: The Design Challenge

Summary:

In this chapter, the author talks about challenges that a designer faces while designing a new product. Author talks about a method which he calls 'hill climbing' which is an iterative process of improving the design of the product. The author talks about why designers sometimes fail in coming up with an effective and efficient design. He says that the designers give priority to aesthetics and they themselves are not typical users.

Norman claims that every customer is unique and has unique expectations. This adds to the complexity of designing a product. Two mistakes that the designers make is to add too many features in to a single product and the other is to make the product too complex to understand.

Discussion:

Towards the end of the chapter Norman talks about design of computers and I think that was pretty interesting. It was fascinating to read that his ideas and claims 20 years ago are now a reality and companies are following his advice. Also the part where he mentions typewriters and faucets was very convincing.

Paper Reading #9: Imaginary interfaces: spatial interaction with empty hands and without visual feedback

Reference Information

Title: Imaginary Interfaces: Spatial Interaction with Empty Hands and without Visual Feedback

Names of authors: Sean Gustafson, Daniel Bierwirth, Patrick Baudisch

Presentation venue: UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology

Summary:

Current screen-less devices only support buttons and gestures. Screen-less wearable devices allow for the smallest form factor and thus the maximum mobility. Pointing is not supported because users have nothing to point at. However, the designers challenge the notion that spatial interaction requires a screen and propose a method for bringing spatial interaction to screen-less devices.

In this paper, the authors present Imaginary Interfaces, screen-less devices that allow users to perform spatial interaction with empty hands and without visual feedback. Unlike projection-based solutions, such as Sixth Sense, all of the spatial information is contained in the user's mind and all interaction is done relative to the user's frame of reference. Users define the origin of an imaginary space by forming an L-shaped coordinate cross with their non-dominant hand. Users then point and draw with their dominant hand in the resulting space.

With three user studies the authors investigated the question: To what extent can users interact spatially with a user interface that exists only in their imagination? Participants created simple drawings, annotated existing drawings, and pointed at locations described in imaginary space. Their findings suggested that users’ visual short-term memory can, in part, replace the feedback conventionally displayed on a screen. The authors propose a design for such a device, which works by illuminating the user's hands with infrared light, applying a luminance threshold, and discerning the structures that comprise the imaginary interface

Discussion:

The idea and the concept is very interesting. Such methods of interactions are gaining increasing importance, we have already seen the famous research - Sixth Sense done at MIT. However, the users will have to remember hundreds of gestures for performing various tasks, which can be annoying. Also, the gesture recognition has to be really accurate, since there is a good chance that two gestures might look similar and the algorithm may confuse one for another, thus annoying the user. Lastly, consider this situation ten years down the road, everyone having a wearable computer and performing gestures in air, that would be a little weird, I think....everyone waving hand and circling their hands. However, if it brings convenience, other things don't really matter.

Book Reading #17 - HCI Remixed

Chapter 6: A Creative Programming Environment

Summary

In this chapter, the author Henry Leiberman addresses the paper - “Pygmalion: A Creative Programming Environment”. He talks about the creator of the icon based user interface. This person worked at the Xerox corporation. He set the trends for our interaction with computers using icons and drag-n-drop.. Icons are the way we interact with computers today. The idea was later incorporated in Macintosh.

Discussion

The author appreciates Smith's work. No one thought back then that it would be a big thing. I personally think that the idea of using icons was brilliant and it deserves much more credit than Smith received for his revolutionary work.

Chapter 7: Fundamentals in HCI: Learning the Value of Consistency and User Models

Summary:

In this chapter, Sara Bly talks about the Red Book used by the Xerox Corporation. The Red Book instructed the design process and set the design standards at Xerox. It was primarily divided into two parts - document creation and document management. The author mentions that the Red Book is important because it focussed on the interface design. The Red book laid importance on consistency of design. Lastly, she mentions that the Red Book offered a conceptual model.

Discussion:

I thought this chapter was very interesting. I look at the Red Book as the book to success that Xerox Corporation used wisely. It had the secret ingredients to the right design. This was probably why Xerox was a big thing back then and everybody in the field of computing wanted to work for Xerox research.

Chapter 9: The Disappearing Computer

Summary:

In this chapter, Streitz talks about "disappearing of the computer" by which he implies incorporation of technology in our everyday lives to such an extent that we stop realizing that we are using technology anymore. Technology will become so commonplace that there will be nothing special about it.

Discussion:

I think Streitz indeed saw the future. Today, we use technology for everything we do. Everyone carries a cellphone that is as powerful as a decade old computer. Laptops and tablets have become commonplace. Cars, kitchens and garages have computers. Thus, we can see that his metaphor has turned out to be true.

Chapter 10: It Really Is All About Location!

Summary:

The author of the essay Anind Dey talks about a paper titled "The Active Badge Location System". This paper talked about a system in which people could wear badges that helped other people in locating them and which later was used to increase work efficiency. Today, location based services, maps and other software based on GPS have a big market. The paper talks about the importance of such services.

Discussion:

The motive of describing the Active Badge Location System was to describe the origins of location based services. Today, location based services are indeed a huge business. People use Google maps for getting directions instead of traditional maps. GPS technology is used for tracking pets and every car has a built in navigation system.

Chapter 46: The Essential Role of Mental Models in HCI: Card, Moran, and Newell

Summary:

In this essay, the author Kate Ehrlich talks about the book - The psychology of Human-Computer interaction and the influence it had on her. The book describes how people form mental models about computers. She goes on to explain how these mental models helped the developers to develop and design new systems.

Discussion:

I think it was interesting to read about the difference in the thought process of common users, psychologists and computer programmers. Somethings that the programmers find obvious might not be very self intuitive for the end user. It's important to keep this notion is in mind while developing software systems and other technology related products.

Chapter 47: A Most Fitting Law

Summary:

In this essay, Olson mentions mathematical formula that can be used in the field if Human Computer Interaction, especially in designing user interfaces. In general, the area has no mathematical rules. It is driven by aesthetics, user reactions and to some extent human psychology. The mathematical law he mentions is the Fitt's law MT=a+b lg(2A/W) where MT=movement time, and b are constants, A is the distance of the movement and W is the width of the target.

Discussion:

I thought that the mathematical formula did make sense. However, any interface designer would consider the inconvenience the user might have if two buttons having similar functions or some connection (undo and redo, back and forward) are placed very far from each other, say on the opposite sides of the screen. Fitt proved this point mathematically.