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User Interfaces for Pervasive Computing Devices

Prof. James A. LandayJanuary 7, 1999

http://guir.berkeley.edu

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UI Challenges

Pervasive computing devices will not have the same UI as “dad’s PC”* there will be a range of devices

- often with small screens & alternative input+ pens, speech, gesture, etc.

- many special purpose to particular applications+ appliances

* devices usually require other infrastructure How to explore this further?

* let 50 undergraduates at the problem!

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Outline

HCI course & project description Resulting undergraduate projects Collaborative note-taking with NotePals Directions for the future

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CS 160: User Interface Design, Prototyping, &

Evaluation

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What is HCI?

Organizational & Social Issues

HumansTechnology

Task

Design

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Goal of our HCI course (CS 160)

Learn to design, prototype, & evaluate UIs* tasks of prospective users* cognitive/perceptual constraints affecting design* techniques for evaluating UI designs* importance of iterative design for usability* technology used to prototype & implement UIs* how to work together as a team* communicating results to a group

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Project Structure

Iterative design of a real UI Students propose & choose projects

* 4-5 person teams Semester long project worth 45% of

grade Four presentations

* one 7-12 minute presentation / team member

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Scenario for last Fall

Soda Hall of the Future* everyone has PDAs

- students, faculty, staff- assume IBM WorkPads

* ubiquitous cradles or wireless networking

All projects involved this scenario* ubiquitous networking not used by all designs

IBM graciously donated WorkPads The top 3 teams got to keep their WorkPads

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Fall Semester’s Projects

Ink Chat Pocket Change PocketProf Rendezvous VMOD: Video &

Music On Demand

NotePals II Nutrition/Exercise

Tracker Shopping Companion Video E-Mail Workstation

Scheduler

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Sketching & Storyboarding

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Sketching & Storyboarding

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Low-fi Prototyping

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Low-fi Prototyping

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Low-fi Prototyping

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Heuristic Evaluation & User Testing

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Heuristic Evaluation & User Testing

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Heuristic Evaluation & User Testing

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NotePals: Collaborative Note Taking on Pervasive Devices

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How NotePals Works

Meet in any environment Take free-form ink noteson WorkPads*

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*WorkPads/Pilots are becoming ubiquitous

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How NotePals Works (cont.)

Dock WorkPads with PCs& press “HotSync”

Browse notes on the Web

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Conference Notes

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NotePals for Classroom Note Taking

Students always want slides in advance* often not practical or advisable

NotePals solution* synchronize notes w/ presentation (slides or

A/v)* students can browse their own notes w/ slides* students can share notes & cooperate

Expected success since NotePals has been successfully used by our group for 1 year* over 3000 pages of notes in our repository

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Student Note Taking

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Results of this Experiment

At start of semester 89% of students said they took notes in class (72% share)

After 4 weeks of this course, only 48% reported taking notes* all said because slides are online & complete

Only 17% with NotePals, others reported* application too slow* screen too small* UI hard to learn* paper more natural

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Solutions to this Problem

Adopt NotePals II or TeamNotes UI* both eliminate gesture for moving cursor

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Create a better slide/note browser CrossPad client

* more natural for note taking* lots of success since prototype came up in Nov.

- has resulted in many more notes in the repository

* would like to obtain pads for an entire class Re-run the experiment in a class that is less

dependent on detailed lecture slides

Solutions & Future Directions

NotePals II or TeamNotes UI* both eliminate gesture for moving cursor