Paper Reading #1: Imaginary Interfaces, Spatial Interaction with Empty Hands and without Visual Feedback

Imaginary Interfaces: Spatial Interaction with Empty Hands and without Visual Feedback

Sean Gustafson, Daniel Bierwirth and Patrick Baudisch

Sean Gustafson is a PhD student studying at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany.

Daniel Bierwirth is a cofounder of mobile software company. He's holds a master's degree in IT-Systems Engineering from Hasso Plattner Institute.

Patrick Baudisch is a professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute focusing on Human Computer Interaction.

This paper was presented at the UIST 2010.

Summary

In the paper, the researchers attempted to push the bounds of normal interfaces by attempting to create an interface that relied on the user's short-term memory. This imaginary interface forced the user to attempt to remember or figure out the interactive space. Unlike other gesture or spatial interaction tests, this attempt gives the user no visual output. Their main hypothesis was that the visual memory of a human would be enough to provide a feasible interface. 

They provided three different user studies:

1) The user was asked to complete three different drawing tasks. Graffiti characters, repeated drawings, and multi-stroke drawing. After showing the user what to draw, the testers had the participant copy the drawings. Through this test, participants were able to build up their "visuospatial" memory because they were watching their hands. The results provided showed that with all three tests, the participant was able to recreate the drawings.

2) The participant was asked to draw a shape, rotate, and attempt to point to the vertex of the shape they had just drawn. They found that the user was able to find the vertex again when they used their other hand in an L-shape to be a reference point, even with rotation.

3) The third test featured the participant attempting to locate a given coordinate using their left hand in an L-shape as a reference point. The test showed that people had a harder time attempting to locate the point as the point was farther away from their reference point. 

After these results, they concluded that using a device like this would require users to make gestures while their short term memory still had the mental image. They also concluded that using a mobile reference point greatly helped the accuracy of selecting or making annotations. 

They also hoped to pursue imaginary interfaces even farther by attempting to have the device work with user speech as well. 

Discussion

I believe the researchers certainly demonstrated effectively that an "imaginary interface" could provide viable input. Most of the users input was very close to correctness (choosing the right coordinate or drawing the correct shape). One important point that the article failed to address was the possibility of the need for negative feedback. For example, if a user tries to use a certain gesture the device might either a) interpret the gesture as something different or b) throw an error.

In the first case, because there is no interface except through the "imagination", the user could be doing something they don't mean to do. In the second case, the device wouldn't really have a way to alert the user of something that went wrong. 

This paper is interesting though because it opens up an entire realm of human interaction that I've never thought about. Using purely the human short term memory, the interface exists only in the mind. Something that I'd find fascinating is the potential usage of an interface like this combined with another well used interface. The article discussed perhaps linking this imaginary interface with a cellphone. I think that would be a perfect application. Small mobile interfaces severely limit what one can do but with a gesture interface like the one described in the paper, so many more interaction methods are possible. 

On Computers

Aristotle's writing On Plants detailed not only why Aristotle believed plants to have a soul but also enumerated the purposes and various characteristics that make up plants. Through this writing, in many respects, it's easy to draw comparisons between plants and computers. For one, like plants, there are many, many different types of computers. Secondly, Aristotle declares that life is not immediately evident in plants. Similarly, life in computers isn't necessarily immediately evident but computers are extremely complex and "smart" machines. The origin of life and a soul is a glaring difference between the two, however.

Aristotle was known for not only being a philosopher but also for his application of science. In this writing, he steps through, in a very scientific method, the various traits of plants and what causes motion and life within said plants. He theorizes about everything from why fruit is developed like it is to why certain dirt is helpful to certain plants. He enumerates (almost) every type of plant that fits into the various niches. A similar practice can actually be done with computers as well. We have computers which are specifically designed for a home user. We have computers that are designed for graphic designers. We have computers for students. Cell phones are computers. My coffee maker has a computer. These computers, like plants, are all very different from one another yet they're all lumped together into one category. They all have various different purposes and are all vastly designed differently but they are all connected together in an artificial family tree.

The discussion of life is another way in which plants and computers are similar. Aristotle quickly classifies plants as alive and yet the modern human race is extremely hesitant to call computers alive. Computers perform extremely complex operations, perhaps even more complex than the operations that plants perform. While computers may not necessarily physically grow, they are indeed capable of generating more data. Perhaps the glaring difference between plant life and computer "life", however, is the computer's glaring inability to reproduce. Computers are able to reproduce and duplicate data but are unable to transpose their physical makeup like plants.

The discussion of the soul is perhaps one of the most interesting arguments that Aristotle presents. The idea whether or not computers (or plants) have a soul is a very large question of definitions. If something has a soul because it has life, then a deeper investigation on the computer's life must be held since, by that definition, a computer might indeed have a soul.

About me (Blog #-1)

About moi:

• poffdeluxe@tamu.edu
• 3rd Year Junior
• I'm taking this class to begin to form an understanding regarding efficient and interesting ways for humans to interact with computers.
• I expect to either be running my own software related start-up or working for a successful company in a software engineering position.
• The next big technological advancement will hopefully be an elegant replacement for the standard keyboard and mouse. I envision some sort of holographic touch technology sometime in the future.
• If I could travel back in time, I'd probably like to meeting Socrates or Plato just to understand their line of reason and to better understand the social climate they came from. 
• My favorite shoes are probably my Chaco sandals. They're heavy duty and sturdy for long walks or hikes yet they're sandals so they let my feet breathe. 
• Someday, I hope to learn German. My ancestors were German and I find German culture fascinating.
• While my first name is technically "Bryant", I greatly prefer being called "Poff."