pda

While it is generally accepted that new Internet terminals should leverage the installed base of Web content and services, the differences between desktop computers and very small devices makes this challenging. Indeed, the browser interaction model has evolved on desktop computers having a unique combination of user interface (large display, keyboard, pointing device), hardware, and networking capabilities. In contrast, Internet enabled cell phones, typically with 3-10 lines of text, sacrifice usability as Web terminals in favor of portability and other functions. Based on our earlier experiences building and using a Web browser for small devices we propose a new UI that splits apart the integrated activities of link following and reading into separate modes: navigating to; and acting on web content. This interaction technique for very small devices is both simpler for navigating and allows users to do more than just read. The M-Links system incorporates modal browsing interaction and addresses a number of associated problems. We have built our system with an emphasis on simplicity and user extensibility and describe the design, implementation and evolution of the user interface.

Computing devices within current work and play environments are relatively static. As the number of 'networked' devices grows, and as people and their devices become more dynamic, situations will commonly arise where users will wish to use 'that device there' instead of navigating through traditional user interface widgets such as lists. This paper describes a process for identifying devices through a pointing gesture using custom tags and a custom stylus called the gesturePen. Implementation details for this system are provided along with qualitative and quantitative results from a formal user study. As ubiquitous computing environments become more pervasive, people will rapidly switch their focus between many computing devices. The results of our work demonstrate that our gesturePen method can improve the user experience in ubiquitous environments by facilitating significantly faster interactions between computing devices.

EdgeWrite is a new unistroke text entry method for handheld devices designed to provide high accuracy and stability of motion for people with motor impairments. It is also effective for able-bodied people. An EdgeWrite user enters text by traversing the edges and diagonals of a square hole imposed over the usual text input area. Gesture recognition is accomplished not through pattern recognition but through the sequence of corners that are hit. This means that the full stroke path is unimportant and recognition is highly deterministic, enabling better accuracy than other gestural alphabets such as Graffiti. A study of able-bodied users showed subjects with no prior experience were 18% more accurate during text entry with Edge Write than with Graffiti (p>.05), with no significant difference in speed. A study of 4 subjects with motor impairments revealed that some of them were unable to do Graffiti, but all of them could do Edge Write. Those who could do both methods had dramatically better accuracy with Edge Write.

Overview visualizations for small-screen web browsers were designed to provide users with visual context and to allow them to rapidly zoom in on tiles of relevant content. Given that content in the overview is reduced, however, users are often unable to tell which tiles hold the relevant material, which can force them to adopt a time-consuming hunt-and-peck strategy. Collapse-to-zoom addresses this issue by offering an alternative exploration strategy. In addition to allowing users to zoom into relevant areas, collapse-to-zoom allows users to collapse areas deemed irrelevant, such as columns containing menus, archive material, or advertising. Collapsing content causes all remaining content to expand in size causing it to reveal more detail, which increases the user's chance of identifying relevant content. Collapse-to-zoom navigation is based on a hybrid between a marquee selection tool and a marking menu, called marquee menu. It offers four commands for collapsing content areas at different granularities and to switch to a full-size reading view of what is left of the page.

The personal universal controller (PUC) is an approach for improving the interfaces to complex appliances by introducing an intermediary graphical or speech interface. A PUC engages in two-way communication with everyday appliances, first downloading a specification of the appliance's functions, and then automatically creating an interface for controlling that appliance. The specification of each appliance includes a high-level description of every function, a hierarchical grouping of those functions, and dependency information, which relates the availability of each function to the appliance's state. Dependency information makes it easier for designers to create specifications and helps the automatic interface generators produce a higher quality result. We describe the architecture that supports the PUC, and the interface generators that use our specification language to build high-quality graphical and speech interfaces.