Blog #5 A framework for robust and flexible handling of inputs with uncertainty

Authors:
-Julia Schwarz - PhD student at CMU working in the dev lab


-Scott E. Hudson - Professor of HCI at CMU


-Jennifer Mankoff - Associate Professor at the HCII at CMU


-Andrew D. Wilson - SR at Microsoft Research


Presentation Venue:
UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New York, New York, USA


Summary:
The authors present that there is a lot of uncertainty in today's input methods such as the use of pen/touch. They also assert that there has not been much development in this area even though these uncertainties exist. This paper presents a way to handling input with uncertainty in a "systematic, extensible, and easy to manipulate fashion". "Six demonstrations which include tiny buttons that are manipulable using touch input, a text box that can handle multiple interpretations of spoken input, a scrollbar that can respond to inexactly placed input, and buttons which are easier to click for people with motor impairments". In their tests they show how straight forward it would be to apply the tools they developed into today's software. The authors explain how the different stages process uncertain inputs. The authors then describe how the framework works in each of the different stages. The framework they developed is based on probability calculations. They perform tests of ambiguous inputs and describe how each of these inputs is handled by the framework.


Discussion:
It is an interesting idea that input can be uncertain. I had never thought about input being uncertain before reading this paper. I can see why the authors think that this framework would be very useful to modern day applications. Imagine our touch-screen devices with this kind of technology. It would be interesting to see this system deployed on all platforms uniformly. It would bring some level of definition to all platforms and give users a general idea of what to expect when using different platforms.