COGAIN 2006 Keynote by Dr. Roel Vertegaal

When Less is More: Applying Attention to the Design of Context-Aware Computers

Ubiquitous Computing promised to provide users with many simple computing appliances, each appliance suitable for a singular task. While users own more computers than ever before, devices have not become easier to use. Each individual interface is still designed as if the user had only one computer. Instead, featuritis has become a primary marketing mechanism, with cell phones now duplicating functionality of early desktop computers. Users are faced with ever smaller yet ever more demanding user interfaces. How can we design computing appliances that work in synchrony with the user and with each other? How can we reduce complexity through combined functionality of many individual computers?

One approach is to design computing interfaces such that they share common resources, as well as users, by embedding them in the user's social networks. Attentive User Interfaces allow devices to observe human social cues that are used to manage group conversations. By observing the attention of users, devices may determine the user's task focus and their preferred channels and moments of communications. By modeling the user's attention, devices may understand when to await their turn and leave the floor to others. By observing human social networks, devices may share context between many communications. I will illustrate our approach through several prototypes developed at Queen's University's Human Media Lab. These include eye contact sensing phones; appliances that contextualize speech interactions by observing eye contact with users; robot eyes that communicate attention; attentive video conferencing systems that optimize turn taking, attentive wearables as well as attentive architecture.

Biography

Roel Vertegaal, Human Media Lab, Queen's University, Canada.

Dr. Roel Vertegaal is Associate Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Queen's University's School of Computing in Canada, where he leads the Human Media Lab, Canada's premier media laboratory. He is also CEO of Xuuk, Inc, a attentive sensor company. Dr. Vertegaal's first degree was in Music at Utrecht Conservatory, and he spent time as a visual artist and photographer at the Vrije Academie in The Hague. Roel holds an MSc in Computing and a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, from Twente University in The Netherlands. Roel co-chaired the ACM Eye Tracking Research and Applications conference (ETRA), the world's premier eye tracking conference. He co-founded and chaired alt.chi, an alternative papers venue at the prestigious ACM CHI conference, for which he served as associate program chair. His work was awarded with the Premier of Ontario's Research Excellence Award, and was featured on ABC Good Morning America, Discovery Channel's Science Daily and Scientific American, amongst others. Roel's current interest lies in the design of completely transparent computers. www.roelvertegaal.com

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