Most current designs of information technology are based on the notion of supporting distinct tasks such as document production, email usage, and voice communication. In this paper we present empirical results that suggest that people organize their work in terms of much larger and thematically connected units of work. We present results of fieldwork observation of information workers in three different roles: analysts, software developers, and managers. We discovered that all of these types of workers experience a high level of discontinuity in the execution of their activities. People average about three minutes on a task and about two minutes using a tool or paper document before switching tasks. We introduce the concept of working spheres to explain the inherent way in which individuals conceptualize and organize their basic units of work. People worked in an average of ten working spheres. Working spheres are also fragmented; people spend about 12 minutes in a working sphere before they switch to another. We argue that information technology design needs to support people's continual switching between working spheres.

Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing both have the goal of pushing the computer into the background, supporting all kinds of human activities. We thrust ubiquitous computing into the extremely hostile environment of the sparring ring of a martial art competition. Our system uses piezoelectric force sensors that transmit signals wirelessly to enable the detection of when a significant impact has been delivered to a competitor's body. The objective is to support the judges in scoring the sparring matches accurately, while preserving the goal of merging and blending into the background of the activity.

Our research has explored two different approaches to sharing awareness information among users to help support initiating contact. Awarenex shares basic awareness cues (presence, scheduled appointments) for viewers to make their own inferences of others' availability. Lilsys collects more detailed sensor information, but uses it to create an unavailability inference (possibly unavailable, probably unavailable) that is shared for others to view. These contrasting approaches demonstrate tradeoffs in user interface design and privacy exposure.

We have begun experiments to identify the relevant cognitive properties of a broad variety of command and pointing techniques in a multi-person, multi-machine environment. This presentation will describe a framework for analyzing the dimensions of differences between control affordances, the measures of effectiveness and fluency in a situation of use, and pilot studies based on a simple environment for comparing ways of moving graphical objects in a multi-device environment.

This paper describes the development of a component of MERBoard, a collaborative workspace created to support the activities of science and engineering teams for the Mars Exploration Rovers Mission (MER). Launched in June of 2003, the rovers will land in January 2004 and Mars surface operations will run through April 2004. Each rover's planned mission lifetime is ninety sols (Martian days) and it can perform several hours worth of activity per day (e.g. taking panoramic images or driving). Each Martian day, commands will be uploaded to the rovers. Due to limited data capacity and significant lag between command issuance and data return, the science discovery and planning process is highly time-pressured. The mission science and engineering teams have 18 earth hours to analyze the data received, use the analysis in deciding the science plan for the following day, and encode the science activities as a sequence of commands for transmission to the rover. MER represents a significant increase in both spacecraft and ground-systems complexity as compared to previous missions. The mission will be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days week. The time-pressured situation requires close collaboration to reach consensus in the time allotted for each phase of the process.

Two fundamental elements of HCI education are 'off the desktop': (1) broad exposure to many related disciplines, their assumptions and practica, and (2) the skill to reflect in individual and collective ways upon the results and process of analysis and design. Far from specializing in particular areas, HCI designers must learn how to design the process of design.

With Windows XP Media Center Edition, Microsoft has broken new ground in the way people interact with PCs by making it possible to access TV, music, and photos from across the room via a remote control. This document provides remote control design guidelines based upon data gathered from usability studies.

As we design "off the desktop" systems, we increasingly manipulate physical as well as virtual objects. Virtual objects, as data, can be copied, modified, stored, sent between systems, and in general treated somewhat like physical objects. Now these data objects typically do not leave the virtual world behind and become a physical thing. Nor do we normally see a physical object disappear from the real world in order to become digital data. We propose to create a fundamentally new kind of object, the dual-reality object. The dual-reality object can live in either the physical universe or the virtual universe, can freely move between the two, but cannot be in both at the same time. Achieving this effect requires special hardware and a carefully designed distributed software system. The dual-reality object is a kind of extreme in a spectrum of designs of relations between physical and virtual objects, designs that are at the heart of "off the desktop" systems. It's hoped the dual-reality object will engender discussion and insight about the fundamental issues that arise in relating the two universes.

Software development in the context of ubiquitous computing environments has to face several challenges. Devices have heterogeneous properties requiring different and novel interaction techniques '- which must be coordinated when collaborating. This paper proposes a conceptual application model that supports the software development by identifying software concerns that need to be clearly separated in order to guarantee enough flexibility and extensibility to enable the required interaction techniques.

People spend more time in their cars today than ever before, and the use of in-vehicle devices has jumped dramatically over the past decade. We describe a cognitive modeling-based approach that allows designers to rapidly prototype new devices, model behavior on these devices, and evaluate them using recognized real-world measures of driver distraction.

The affordance of large personal screens is different from the affordance of regular sized screens. In this talk, we present four interaction and visualization techniques that help users make better use of the additional screen resources offered by large screens and help users deal with some of the challenges brought up by these screens.

In this paper, we describe MediaMetro, a system for interactive 3D visualization of video and multimedia collections. Using a city metaphor, buildings represent videos or multimedia documents and districts represent the collection's directory hierarchy. Each building visualizes a video using FXPAL Manga (a comic book style visualization); a building can also visualize a multimedia document by display different media content on different sides of the building. Districts are laid out using algorithms that reflect the structure of the directory hierarchy; we present a grid layout algorithm and a different-sized rectangle layout algorithm. For the grid layout, we provide enhancements using road widths to indicate distance between documents and curb widths to indicate the value of documents. MediaMetro is well-suited for an immersive view on a large display. Users can see the visual summaries of the videos in the collection clearly. They can navigate the cityscape with a Sony PlayStation dance mat and start video playback with a wireless mouse.

Users face practical problems when they start using a new device, system or service for the very first time, or they want to replace an existing device with a new one. Although the challenge of first use is known and admitted among users, designers, manufacturers and research communities, there is astonishingly small number of published research about out-of-box experience of consumer products or commodities. In this study we study the mobile phone out-of-box experience (OOBE). We analyze and extend existing OOBE design steps with (1) Product Extension and (2) Product Replacement, and address further research directions.

HyperMirror is a virtual space for telecommunication that consists of image and sound and does not imitate face-to-face conversation. A promising application of HyperMirror includes uses in nature observation classes at schools. In such an application, all participants watch a common synthesized image that displays all of them sharing a common background, i.e. the outdoor field, regardless of whether they are actually in a classroom or at the outdoor field. This educational application has a specific problem of needing camerawork to run the class, which might damage the feeling of togetherness, a major advantage of HyperMirror communication. This paper identifies factors in camerawork that causes this problem, and proposes an alleviation method for incorporating seamless camerawork into HyperMirror communication. The method was experimentally verified using a prototype system.

People are increasingly using personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellphones in their daily lives. The primary advantage of these devices is that they allow people to perform tasks requiring computation and communication without tying them to specific locations. Despite the popularity of these devices, they do have drawbacks. Most significantly, they impose a trade-off between luggability and capability. To get smaller and lighter devices, users must accept reduced processing power, storage space, communication capabilities, interaction quality, and battery life. Our goal is to change the balance in this trade-off by improving interaction with mobile devices without increasing their size or weight. We propose to accomplish this goal by allowing users to opportunistically annex input and output resources that they encounter in the environment. Opportunistic annexing is the process of temporarily attaching one or more of these resources to a computational device to enhance its capabilities. In this paper we discuss initial research suggesting the benefits of opportunistic annexing, describe some of the challenges to designing the user experience, and discuss potential software and security architectures.

Current systems often interrupt at inappropriate times or unduly demand attention because they cannot consider that a person is busy and should not be interrupted. We demonstrate the feasibility of sensor-based statistical models of the interruptibility of office workers. Such models have the potential to support a variety of important advances in human computer interaction and computer mediated communication.

Many have been inspired by the visions of ubiquitous computing. More than a decade after Weiser's seminal writing, we still see a lot of the promise of ubicomp, but we have failed to produce the tools necessary to promote creative exploration in this area. The development of models and tools for simplifying the development of ubicomp applications is a grand challenge that impedes our progress in this area. By analogy to progress for the traditional 2-D graphical user interface (GUI), we suggest how we might meet this challenge.

Our work examines some of the challenges and potential solutions for course content selection, thematic integration, and programmatic integration for ubiquitous and pervasive computing in a computer science curriculum. We suggest a framework that situates contemporary methods within a more enduring case-based structure, potentially filling many gaps in students' ongoing education if supported with an active learning approach. Our ongoing efforts explores the use of these techniques in the classroom through different approaches--results will be presented at the HCIC meeting. Note: this paper has also been submitted to the IEEE Workshop on Pervasive Education.

Shared Text Input enables students in a class to take notes on their Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and laptops and share them with their 'study group' in real-time. Students also receive instructor's slides in real-time as they are displayed by the instructor. With a single tap operation on the slide image or the shared notes, users can quickly reuse words entered by their fellow note takers, improving text input on handheld devices. Seeing notes also improve awareness for users having a keyboard. The system has been used in actual practice for a graduate level course on wireless mobile computing. In developing this system, special attention has been paid to the task of entering text on PDAs, efficient use of the screen real estate, dynamics among students, privacy and ease of use issues. We report the findings of this user study.

Our research team has investigated 'computing of the desktop' in two different directions: the design, development, and assessment of (1) socio-technical environments supported by personalized, portable devices and wireless communication supporting people as they move around in the world; and (2) large computational tables allowing people to access, contribute, and interact with information to support collaborative work among people in shared physical locations.

Lightweight photo sharing, particularly via mobile devices, is fast becoming a common communication medium used for maintaining a presence in the lives of friends and family. How should such systems be designed to maximize this social presence while maintaining simplicity? An experimental photo sharing system was developed and tested that, compared to current systems, offers highly simplified, group-centric sharing, automatic and persistent people-centric organization, and tightly integrated desktop and mobile sharing and viewing. In an experimental field study, the photo sharing behaviors of groups of family or friends were studied using their normal photo sharing methods and with the prototype sharing system. Results show that users found photo sharing easier and more fun, shared more photos, and had an enhanced sense of social presence when sharing with the experimental system. Results are discussed in the context of design principles for the rapidly increasing number of lightweight photo sharing systems.

The ubiquity of digital communication and mobile devices has brought rise to a new social phenomenon known as 'Smart Mobs'. Smart mobs are characterized by their ability to use technology to effectively coordinate, mobilize and converge in a moment's notice. Our Swarm system combines these technologies to enhance casual social interaction. We built a cell phone-based SMS (Short Message Service communication system called Swarm to help individuals coordinate with their social groups through message broadcasting and status polling. In a limited deployment to an active social group, we found that Swarm fostered smart convergence and also increased peripheral social awareness. User feedback highlighted potential design improvements for a more usable Swarm system.

In this paper, we propose a framework for the evaluation of ubiquitous computing applications to make it easier for researchers to learn from each other's results and to create effective discount evaluation techniques and design guidelines for ubicomp applications, and to ensure that key areas of evaluation are not overlooked.

Ever since the invention of light bulbs and electric switches, people are so used to handling electric machines remotely, and they seldom notice the inconveniences of indirect machine control. For example, they believe that controlling many audio-visual devices is required for enjoying a movie, since they are so used to controlling complicated machines even for simple tasks. In the age of mobile and ubiquitous computing, we now have sufficient devices, computers, and network infrastructure for redesigning everything and defining simple interactions for simple tasks. We introduce our approaches for finding new 'idioms' for controlling information appliances in the ubiquitous computing age.

This paper describes a system for accessing audio content over a global communication network such as the internet, that can efficiently organize and categorize audio content of interest, while providing a simple user interface to access the desired audio content. A tuning engine organizes and classifies content into show classification types. User configured audio content from the tuning engine is then categorized and may be assigned to shows which are accessed from a simplified web-radio interface.

It is generally recognized that today's frontier of HCI research lies beyond the traditional desktop computers whose GUI interfaces were built on the foundation of: display ' pointing device'full keyboard. Many interface challenges arise without such a physical UI foundation. Text writing ' ranging from entering URLs and search queries, filling forms, typing commands, to taking notes and writing emails and chat messages ' is one of the hard problems awaiting for solutions in off-desktop computing. This paper summarizes and synthesizes a research program on this topic at the IBM Almaden Research Center. It analyzes various dimensions that constitute a good text input interface; briefly reviews related literature; discusses the evaluation methodology issues of text input; summarizes the major ideas and results of the two systems, ATOMIK and SHARK; and points out current and future directions in the area from our current vantage point.

Everyday retrospective memory recall remains a real and open problem especially in habitual household tasks ranging from forgetting whether medication has been taken to recalling how many scoops of flour have been added of the five scoops required. Our research goal is to design information displays that support memory recall accurately, socially, and emotionally. We briefly describe a class of deja vu displays detailing their design guidelines of a passive, always-on visual summary of recent actions. We argue that a memory aid not only has to be more accurate than the user, but also needs to be socially and emotionally conducive in order to be effective.

'High Reliability Organizations' (HRO's) are organizations in which failure has catastrophic implications. We contend that successfully implementing telepresence technologies in HRO's depends on the users' belief that the technology will enable them to detect potential failures. We present a study of engineering laboratories and suggest novel means for failure detection.

User-centered design is often performed without regard to individual user differences in aptitude and experience. This experiment is an observation of users performing a selection task using common Virtual Environment raybased techniques and analyzes the interaction through psychology aptitude tests, questionnaires and observation. The results of this study indicate correlations between performance and aptitude test and user behavior performed to overcome difficulties in the task. Future directions for more guided research are discussed.

As software becomes ubiquitous, the reliability of software is becoming a widespread concern. Yet the time lost to software errors has become equally important. Our research is investigating ways in which programming environments can help prevent software errors, and help programmers find and repair software errors that that slip through.

Most current designs of information technology are based on the notion of supporting distinct tasks such as document production, email usage, and voice communication. In this paper we present empirical results that suggest that people organize their work in terms of much larger and thematically connected units of work. We present results of fieldwork observation of information workers in three different roles: analysts, software developers, and managers. We discovered that all of these types of workers experience a high level of discontinuity in the execution of their activities. People average about three minutes on a task and somewhat more than two minutes using any electronic tool or paper document before switching tasks. We introduce the concept of working spheres to explain the inherent way in which individuals conceptualize and organize their basic units of work. People worked in an average of ten different working spheres. Working spheres are also fragmented; people spend about 12 minutes in a working sphere before they switch to another. We argue that design of information technology needs to support people's continual switching between working spheres.

We present a brief overview of the M5 project. The foundation of M5 is an understanding of users' high-level goals in managing display space and an understanding of the management issues specific to multiple monitor systems. We present operations to build that match users' intent and target multiple-monitor systems.

Reacting to challenges that have been observed in human-computer interaction education, as well as the multidisciplinary design, science, and engineering underpinnings, we investigate a pedagogical approach based on case methods. Our study of various case method techniques, student learning outcomes, and considerations for HCI curriculum planning. In general, case methods show great promise with a wide variety of topics, and we present broad recommendations for future work that will improve integration of HCI professional practice, research, and education.

Cognitive Levers researchers are developing a number of PDA-based tools for individuals with cognitive disabilities. This paper describes a multi-phase user study designed to uncover usability issues and evolving user needs for these devices that only arise during use time. The results will be used to improve the end-user customization and adaptability of these tools.

Everyday work frequently involves coordinating and collaborating with others, but the structure of collaboration is largely invisible to conventional desktop applications. We are exploring ways to support everyday collaboration by allowing applications access to the social, organizational, and temporal settings within which work is conducted. In this paper, we present two generations of systems supporting everyday collaboration, focusing on ways to recover and represent the temporal and social structures of online activity.

Mark Weiser's Scientific American article has inspired many to construct instrumented environments demonstrating applications of ubiquitous computing technology in everyday activities. Unfortunately, these applications remain difficult to build, manage and evolve. We discuss how development of models and tools for simplifying development of these applications can further research this area.

Mixed results have been found for new technology adoptions in organizations. We studied the implementation and operation of a new medication delivery system - an autonomous mobile robot in a hospital, which turned out to be a case of unsuccessful adoption. Based on three distinctions of "new technology" - stochasticity, automation, and abstraction, and the specific nature of the robot technology - autonomy and mobility, the author of the paper identifies and examines the following issues that contribute to the failure of the robot adoption - the issue of monitoring, control, and the necessity to perceive the technology as a complex system.

Software development in the context of ubiquitous computing environments has to face several challenges. Devices have heterogeneous properties requiring different and novel interaction techniques ' which must be coordinated when collaborating. This paper proposes a conceptual application model that supports the software development by identifying software concerns that need to be clearly separated in order to guarantee enough flexibility and extensibility to enable the required interaction techniques.