paper: charting ubicomp research

Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in Ubiquitous Computing
Gregory D. Abowd and Elizabeth D. Mynatt
ACM TOCHI, Vol. 7, No. 1, March 2000

This paper reviews ubiquitous computing research and suggests future directions. The authors present four dimensions of scale for characterizing ubicomp systems: device (inch, foot, yard), space (distribution of computation in physical space), people (critical mass acceptance), and time (availability of interaction). Historical work is presented and categorized under three interaction themes: natural interfaces (e.g. speech, handwriting, tangible UIs, vision), context-aware applications (e.g. implicit input of location, identity, activity), and automated capture and access (e.g. video, event logging, annotation). The authors then suggest a fourth, encompassing research theme of everyday computing, characterized by diffuse computational support of informal, everyday activities. This theme suggests a number of new pressing problems for research: continuously present computer interfaces, information presentation at varying levels of the periphery of human attention, bridging events between physical and virtual worlds, and modifying traditional HCI methods for informal, peripheral, and opportunistic behavior. Additional issues include how to evaluate ubicomp systems (for which the authors suggest CSCW-inspired, real-world deployment and long-term observation of use) and how to cope with the various social implications, both due to privacy and security and to behavior adaptation.

In addition to the useful synopsis and categorization of past work, I thought the real contribution of this paper was the numerous suggestions for future research, many of which are quite important and inspiring. I was also very happy to see that many of the lessons of CSCW, which are particularly relevant to ubicomp, were influencing the perspective of the authors.

However, on the critical side a couple things struck me. One is that many of the suggestions of research are lacking some kind of notion of how "deep" the research problem runs. For example, the research problems in capture and access basically summarize both the meta-data and retrieval problems, long-standing fundamental issues in the multimedia community. However, this depth and extent of the research issue, or how we might skirt the fundamental issues by domain-specificity, is not mentioned. Another issue I had was that I felt the everyday computing scenario might have used some fleshing out. I wanted the authors to provide me with the compelling scenario they say such research mandates. Examples were provided, so perhaps I am being overly critical, but I wanted a more concrete exposition, perhaps along the lines of Weiser's Sal scenario.

See the extended entry for a more thorough summary

• Introduction
• Ubicomp as proliferation of computing into the physical world
• Historically three primary interaction themes:
• Natural Interfaces
• Context-Aware applications
• Automated capture and access
• Everyday computing: a new interaction theme:

• Focused on scaling interaction with respect to time
• Addressing interruption and resumption of interaction
• Representing passages of time
• Providing associative storage model
• Informal and unstructured activities
• All themes have difficult issues w.r.t. social implications
• Privacy, Security, Visibility, Control
• Social phenomena (behavior modification)

• Evolutionary Path
• Devices: PARCTab + Liveboard
• Input: Unistroke
• Infrastructure: Active Badge
• Applications: Tivoli, Wearables as memory assistant + implicit info sharing

• Different dimensions of scale
• Device – the physical scale of the device (palm, laptop, whiteboard)
• Space – distribution of computation into physical space
• People – reaching critical mass acceptance
• Time – availability of interaction

• Proliferation of devices of varying scale has indeed occurred

• Current ubicomp success has been in physical mobility (but NOT physical awareness!), suggest increased focus on issues of time – continuous interaction.
• Applications research as the ultimate purpose for ubicomp research

• Natural Input
• Examples
• Speech UIs
• Pen Input
• Computer Vision
• Tangible Interfaces
• Multimodal Interfaces
• Requirements for rapid development
• First-Class Natural Data Types + Operations
• Handling Error
• Error reduction
• Error discovery
• Reusable infrastructure for error correction

• Context-Aware Computing
• Context
• Information characterizing the physical and social environment
• Who, What, Where, When, Why
• Context as Implicit Input
• Representing Context
• Context Fusion
• Merging results of multiple context services
• Augmented reality
• Closing the loop b/w context and the world

• Automated Capture and Access to Live Experiences
• Augment inefficiency of human record-taking
• Challenges in Capture and Access
• Capture
• Meta-data problem
• Merging multiple sources (manageability vs. info overload)
• Access
• Search and retrieval problem
• Handling versioning and annotation
• Privacy management

• Everyday Computing
• Supporting informal, daily activities
• Characterization of Activities
• They rarely have a clear beginning or end
• Interruption is expected
• Multiple activities operate concurrently
• Time is an important discriminator
• Associative models of information are needed
• Synergy Among Themes
• Natural Input + Context-Awareness + Capture/Access
• Research Directions
• Design a continuously present computer interface
• Information appliance, agents, wearables
• Presenting information at varying levels of attentional periphery
• CSCW, Ambient displays
• Connecting events between physical and virtual worlds
• Must understand how to combine such information such that the presentation matches user conceptual models
• Modify traditional HCI methods for informal, peripheral, and opportunistic behavior

• Additional Challenges
• Evaluation
• Finding and Addressing a Human Need
• Compelling scenario underlying research
• Feasibility studies – both technical and user-centric
• Evaluate in the Context of Authentic Use
• Effective evaluation requires a realistic deployment
• Long-term study of usage
• Task-centric evaluation techniques are inappropriate
• Scenario is of informal, everyday use – not formalized, specific tasks
• Challenge – how to apply qualitative or quantitative metrics
• Social Issues
• Dangers of privacy violation in ubicomp
• Who can access and modify contents?
• Security of data and data transmission
• Users must know what is being sensed and collected
• User control over recording and (at least) distribution
• Acceptable policies for erasing or forgetting memory over time
• Behavior modification
• How does activity change in face of known computation surveillance?

• Conclusion
• The real goal for ubicomp is to provide many single-activity interactions that together promote a unified and continuous interaction between humans and computational services.

Posted by jheer at September 4, 2003 02:50 PM