CS Talk - Michael Nebeling, Carnegie Mellon University
Title: Multiple Devices + Crowds = Richer User Interfaces
Host: Holly Rushmeier
Coffee/tea - 10:15 a.m., BCT MC035
Abstract: At present, user interfaces are typically created by designers for an idealized set of users and the most common interactive devices. In view of the growing number and diversity of new devices, it becomes increasingly difficult to design for the many possible input/output characteristics and contexts of use, and interfaces remain fairly limited in their ability to adapt to devices and their role in a user’s larger task. In this talk, I will describe how my research in human-computer interaction blurs the boundaries of interactive technologies and enables user interfaces to seamlessly grow, with the help of users and crowds, to take advantage of many devices and use contexts that are poorly supported by current design. For example, W3Touch allows user interfaces to adapt to a large variety of touch devices based on user performance metrics and crowd data mining; XDBrowser customizes existing single-device web interfaces for cross-device use based on user-defined cross-device design patterns; and WearWrite allows a user to provide input and interact with a document using their smartwatch on one end of the interface, and a crowd of writers to perform actions on the user’s behalf using larger and more powerful devices on the other end of the interface. I will outline a research agenda that has the goal of making user interface design itself natural, embedding human intelligence into interactive computing technologies, and supporting evidence-based design using large-scale interaction data.