Future of HCI

The final entry of my Journal is about the Future of User Experience.

Novel technologies , digital representations and various tools will offer the means to facilitate creative authoring, designing, learning, thinking and playing. They will allow different groups of people to participate in all kinds of new and engaging activities: from very young children to the elderly; from the amateur to the expert; and for many kinds of ability or disability.

Future of HCI

These technologies will also offer new opportunities in every aspect of life, and in every part of the world. For example, educators and consultants are now able to use off-the-shelf toolkits to assemble and appropriate digital technologies to enhance learning for a range of settings, such as schools, waiting rooms, playgrounds, national parks, and museums. But even better, everyday users can now increasingly create their own content, grab content and applications off the Internet, and assemble their own digital resources just the way they want to.

Technology is changing, people are changing, and society is changing. All this is happening at a rapid and rather alarming rate. We can expect a lot of new devices appealing everyone in the future

All that were imaginary in the past are in reality today and similarly , all which are imaginary and beyond human reach will become reality in the near future.

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 10

Sixth Sense Technology - The State of Art User Experience

With so many amazing devices being invented in the world, People have always wondered about integrating the Real world and the digital world . Pranav Mistry's Sixth sense technology is an answer to that and which has an  amazing user experience.

Sixth sense

We manipulate real life Objects with Gesture. The Sixth Sense is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

Sixth Sense seals the gap by bringing the digital information out into the tangible world, and letting us to interact with it using our normal hand.The SixthSense comprises a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The components are coupled in such a way that it looks like a mobile wearable device .

The camera takes pictures of the various gestures. These are then processed and displayed on any desired surface using a projector.

From HCI's Perspective :

• This Sixth sense will be one great technology that every user will cherish .
• From checking the time , browsing the net and , drawing and so on , This Sixth sense lets the user to do almost anything anywhere .

I salute Dr. Pranav Mistry for this great device which has been generating a lot of global attraction. This device will further be optimized in its looks and we can expect a computerized companion with us always.

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 9

The Expansion of Creative Engagement

We are living in a generation of new and exciting technologies from ubiquitous computing, Web 2.0, Kinect. Move , Surface and so on.

This is enabling more creative uses of computing than ever before. Many of these are advancing our knowledge as a society. For example, various mixed-reality (Tangible User Interfaces) and sensor-rich physical environments(Small Touch phones to Big Kiosks) have been developed to enable people to engage with both the physical and digital world in new ways.

The most playful example of this is the Nintendo Wii, Sony Move and Microsoft Kinect. This is impacting on many aspects of learning, from science and medicine, to the way we teach our children through collaborative learning and experimental games.

We use computers for all kinds of creative engagement, and by all kinds of people. Whether for work or play, and whether they support research, hobbies, or home lives,  technologies will enable us to take the initiative, be constructive, be creative and, ultimately, be in control of our interactions with the world.

As we move toward 2020, we will have more flexibility in the tools we use and the content produced by them. And increasingly, we will use tools and content produced by all manner of people, from friends and family, to scientists and professionals.

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 8

Microsoft Windows 7 Touch - An Enlarged IPAD with a Keyboard ??

The Windows 7 Touch is the latest version of windows OS with a touch screen technology. we can browse online journals, flick through photos , shuffle music by a single touch. This also comes under "Move over mouse" technology as people these days prefer do not prefer to use the mouse.

Windows 7 Touch

The differences i observed in windows touch was that the icon sizes were made much bigger than that of the normal windows. The start icon and the task bar sported similar differences as well. Microsoft claim these changes as "Finger Tip Friendly".

In my opinion, the Windows 7 Touch is similar to an Enlarged IPAD with a keyboard attached. This technology will not help the user but rather give discomfort because,

From HCI's Perspective

• Although the multi touch is an advanced HCI feature, Using your fingers on a screen which is fixed to a position will create discomfort. The screen is fixed vertically and using your fingers on it for a long time will make the user's interface stressful.
• IPAD was a great success because it was compact and the user can hold it in the way he desires.
• The efficiency and the pace of the usage of applications will be slowed drastically. 

Windows 7 touch can be used more for entertainment purposes over normal application usage.

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 7

TANGIBLE USER INTERFACES - Modern age UX

Well ! From my Lecturer's perspective, the term HCI is outdated and the new age term is User eXperience (UX). Similarly the interfaces have  drastically changed as well . The latest interface which is generating a great deal of interest is the Tangible User Interface. It was once known as Graspable User Interface

Tangible interfaces have been recently developed, where everyday physical objects are embedded with computation, being able to sense and react to the ways they are picked up, manipulated, and moved in space. This approach has already found its way into a broad range of toys and game systems such as the Nintendo Wii. Camera and pressure input has also been developed that enables the movement of our whole body to control the computer, such as pressure pads in Dance Revolution and the use of video tracking in Sony’s Eye Toy games. Kinect and Move are the latest advancements in user experience.

From HCI's Perspective :

• Tangible interfaces are a revolution in Human interface with the computers
• The ability to sense our interaction without direct physical engagement with computer systems or input devices is also a growing trend.

I would say Tangible interface is a state of art interface technique which is developing day by day and constantly every year more tangible systems are showing up.

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 6

HCI - Diversifying Day by Day

This entry will describe  how the interaction method with a computer has widely changed over the years. The following article is solely from my perspective and i might have left some invented interface techniques.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) era was the first user friendly interaction technique. We all started to use computers using a keyboard and a mouse clicking on the various graphical icons. Interface to the computers were fairly intuitive. The GUI interface made it so easy for the users rather than solely typed commands. The GUI has been in existence for over 20 years and is being updated till date.

Early GUI

Although the keyboard and mouse are helpful in several ways, Some tasks get complicated by Clicking or Double clicking. For instance, Drawing a car or signing a signature with the help of a mouse is highly tedious.

In the last few years, Several technologies were developed which were Less error prone and rich in detail and these solved all the shortcomings of keyboard & mouse interaction. The STYLUS based interaction on tablet computers were used for precise drawings. A similar interaction method was PAPER based system that digitally capture markings made on specialized paper using a camera embedded in a pen.

Then came the development of NATURAL Interaction where the SPEECH Recognition system came into use which allowed people to issue and dictate voice commands.

The Latest advancements include the SINGLE and the MULTI TOUCH surfaces that enable interaction with the hands and the fingertips on touch-sensitive surfaces, allowing us to manipulate objects digitally as if they were physical.

Multi touch REACTABLE

One thing is very evident from all the above advancements that the HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION is diversifying day by day.

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 5

HUD for Cars

The Head-up display or heads-up display (HUD) is  a transparent display on the windscreen of cars. This was mainly developed so as to prevent the drivers from looking away from their usual viewpoints.

There are a lot of interactive devices inside a car ranging from a Touch screen music player to a GPS. All these devices usually tend to distract the drivers.

 So How is HUD different ?

• Head-Up Display can be recognized by a small square depression on the dashboard.
• Generated by a projector and a system of mirrors that beams an easy-to-read, high-contrast   image onto a translucent film on the windscreen without distracting the driver.

 From HCI's Perspective : 

In my opinion HUD halves the time it takes for eyes to shift focus from road to the instruments and back, dramatically reducing the risk of not seeing the sudden illumination of brake lights of the car ahead, or an unexpected obstacle. Driving at night, too, becomes significantly less fatiguing for the eyes.

This interface technology is relatively new and very expensive.


So whats an alternative?

For the people who cant afford luxury cars, the apple iPhone 3G offers a cool application “smart HUD“. The application can be downloaded from the apps store.

SMART HUD

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 4

Sensational Smart Surface

The Microsoft Surface is the latest in the revolution of user interface. Well, It is a smart table which responds to touch and which can do a whole lot of functionality.  

Microsoft Surface

The surface has object recognizing capabilities and also tracking. The interaction between the user and this machine is simply by touching or dragging their finger-tips across the screen. Its multi-user and multi-touch and can respond to 52 touches at a time. 

I got to see the Surface at an Expo a few months back. In the demo , 2 Microsoft smart phones were kept on the surface which then automatically recognized all the files in each of the phone's memory. Rapid data transfer between the devices were done in seconds . But i wonder if it will work with other smart phones as well.

I was amazed to see the display quality and its precise multi touch perception. This kind of interaction with computers are termed Natural User Interface(NUI). Surface finds increased usage in hospitality businesses such as retails,hotels,public& entertainment and education.

One application of the Microsoft Surface in primary education is shown in the table below: 

From HCI Perspective:

• It overcame the single touch problem and enables multi touch user interface
• Allows multiple users to interact at the same time using real world objects.

I personally feel that the Microsoft Surface will be too expensive for domestic use and moreover it is not compact as well. Leaving the negatives aside, It is one amazing device and  a revolution in HCI

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 3

 

Voice Recognition Technology - A Boon or Bane?

    Voice Recognition is an interface methodology wherein a system recognizes spoken language. The machine or software may take the spoken language as input and translate it into written text depending on which, any function or command given to it is executed. Voice recognition applications include voice user interfaces such as voice dialing (e.g., "Call John"), call routing (e.g., "I would like to make a collect call"), simple data entry and Speech to text processing.

 

The video shows a voice activated lift which goes to the the specified floor upon getting a voice input.

It shows the height of frustration one can get if the system is not precise enough to detect voice signals.

Although the Voice Recognition (VR) is an advanced HCI Why is it not popular?

• A basic example of VR technology is the voice dialing feature in a mobile phone. But there are a very few people who use this. This is because that any common man prefers a visual interface rover a voice interface.
•  Voice recognition devices are good for people who are physically challenged and need to use it because they either have trouble using their hands or good eyesight to push the keypads on the telephone.
• Coming to the video, Although there are huge shifts in technological advancements each day, Installing a voice recognition technology in a lift is something which is not required. 

So whats the solution ? Traditional buttons with proper labels will be perfectly suitable for any lift with lesser number of floors.

For ex : A very simple and elegant lift button panel  where

0 denotes Ground floor
1 denotes Level 1 and so on .

 But what if the panel looks something like this ? 

An appropriate solution will be installing a Touch Screen interface where in the user can enter the floor number where he needs to go. An interface similar to that of an ATM machine . 

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Ashwin Rao
Personal Journal - Entry 2