Recently in Human-Computer Interaction Category

Three news items from the last day or two make me think that we are about to see some major changes in the PC desktop:

Google Introduces New Products for Users

Google has released its Desktop 4 beta, with an impressively rich selection of tools that you can put together in a multitude of combinations to customize your desktop with applications. Ready-made Google Gadgets are mini-applications in many shapes that can be added to your desktop. They include clocks, weather globes, search tools, media players, an email reader, feeds for news and stocks, a photo viewer, maps, a scratch pad and more. Next week Google is introducing Google Notebook, which will allow you to save notes, images and links while doing online research, and to share them with others.

Thinking out of the Xbox

Microsoft has announced a new Live Anywhere platform to be released next year with Windows Vista. Live Anywhere will tie together the Xbox, the PC desktop and the mobile device. Although Microsoft seems to be positioning Live Anywhere as a way to extend gaming across devices, it seems to me this could be a significant step toward multi-device integration in general.

Flash to jump beyond the browser

This might not exactly be new news, but this CNET story reveals more about Adobe's Apollo project, which is working toward liberating Flash (remember Flash is a Macromedia product and Adobe purchased Macromedia awhile back) from the Web browser allowing it to run Internet-enabled applications directly from the user's desktop.

All these announcements suggest a potential for a rapidly-evolving desktop in the near future, with infinite capability for personalization. The announcements that get me most excited are the ones coming from Google, but that's just me.

AB -- 5/11/06

According to a Reuters report from yesterday, a scientist from the Netherlands is reporting that half of products returned as defective are actually in working order. Although companies usually shrug this off, researcher Elke den Ouden of the Technical University of Eindhoven found that the real reason people return products is that they can't figure out how they work.

If you've ever worked in the areas of human-computer interaction, usability and user experience, this would be no surprise to you. Product designers, developers and engineers often think that their products are friendly and easy to use, but in reality designers are not good judges of their own products' usability. Incorporating user testing in the design process can help identify usability problems early in the process, and it can be enlightening to make designers sit down and watch while normal users struggle to perform the simplest tasks with the great product they have created.

Sounds as if den Ouden did some similar testing in connection with her study. The Reuters report says that when product designers were brought in to observe consumers trying to use their products, they "were astounded by the havoc they created."

AB -- 3/7/06

As reported by Patrick Barnard (See "Orative Enterprise Software Puts You in Touch With the Right Person -- Even if You Don’t Know Their Name"), Orative has released version 2.0 of its enterprise software. According to Patrick, the upgrade "adds 'enhanced' presence capabilities – more specifically, the ability to reach the right person in an enterprise without knowing his or her name or extension."

Previously I wrote about the user interface for Orative's presence controls, which according to Patrick have not substantialy changed -- see "Orative's Presence-Availability Control for Mobile Communications."

AB -- 2/8/06

According to the folks at iotum, they are scheduled to give the first public introduction of their Relevance Engine this week at DEMO, the conference scheduled for Feb. 6-8, 2006, in Phoenix, Ariz., devoted to emerging technologies and new products.

I've been writing recently about user-interface issues around the management and control of "presence" and permissions in multi-modal communications. My basic question is, given the multiple devices and applications we use for communications, how does the user manage who can get in touch and when and via which channels? What are the possibilities for user interface and user experience around this issue?

I've known something about iotum since interviewing iotum cofounder Alec Saunders in November 2005, but at that time he didn't have anything specific to show me about the user experience of their Relevance Engine, a technology built to intelligently route the right call to the user at the right time via the right device. As far as I can tell, The Relevance Engine is really only devised to manage voice calls, but I think the principles could be extended to multi-modal communications incorporating text messaging, email and instant messaging.

Now in connection with their presentation at DEMO, iotum has shared with me an interesting series of screen shots that shows how the user manages setup for the Relevance Engine. This series offers some good insight into the management of multi-modal communications, so I am reproducing the screen shots here with iotum's permission.

This opening screen shows the user the major steps in the setup process: Phones ==> Groups ==> Actions.

Next the user inputs his or her voice numbers for different contexts:

Next the user organizes contacts into groups whose calls can be handled according to rules (like permissions groups):

Here the user sees a listing of the groups he or she has set up:

Next comes the "Actions" phase. Here the user can determine under what circumstances calls can be channeled automatically to voicemail:

Next the user can assign priorities and capabilities (similar to group permissions) for each of the groups previously set up:

And here is a review screen showing a summary of actions the user has set up:

This is an account management screen for the user. Note that it gives access to each of the setup stages and also shows logs of calls and appointments:

iotum's interface for setting up the Relevance Engine is the most-developed process I have seen yet for configuring presence-management.

AB -- 2/7/06

Ben Shneiderman of of the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science sent out an announcement today about the release of an important report on creativity support tools. This is an emerging class of tools that supports knowledge and creative workers by helping them generate and work with ideas, collaborate and share knowledge in new ways.

The complete report is available at this web site on the Workshop on Creativity Support Tools.

These excerpts from Shneiderman's announcement will give you an idea of the topic of the report (80 pages):

"Enthusiasts envision accelerating innovation through advanced science collaboratories, design environments, open source communities, and knowledge management tools. They promote idea generation and brainstorming tools for divergent thinking followed by knowledge organization and concept mapping software for convergent processing ....

"The promise of making more people more creative more of the time is compelling, but research on creativity support tools is just beginning. Proposed support tools are meant to serve individuals as they grapple with problems, as well as cross-disciplinary teams working in close collaboration even when separated by distance. Even more ambitious is the provision of social creativity support tools for larger communities working in rich socio-technical environments over longer time periods."

AB -- 2/6/06

Orative offers an interesting technology that helps overcome some presence-related problems, at least among members of a team or organization and at least in connection with mobile communications.

The problem I'm really interested in looking at is, In a world of multi-modal communications, how does the user control his or her availability to other people trying to get in touch through various devices and applications. I am not equally available to all people at all times via all devices. How do I control who can contact me through what means at what time for what purpose? What would the user interface look like that could give me this kind of multi-modal control? How would that interface behave? What would be the user experience for such an integrated application?

Orative's solution focuses only on mobile communications, but its interface provides some insight into presence controls -- go to the company's home page for a pretty good Flash demo of how Orative works. Orative uses enterprise server technology with client software installed on users' mobile phones. The solution allows members of a team to "coordinate conversations, collaborate with colleagues, screen unwanted calls and interruptions, and access personal and corporate phone books."

Image these screen shots on your mobile phone and you'll get an idea what Orative is like for the user:

If I understand correctly, the screen on the left allows you to quickly set your availability at any give time. The screen on the right shows the availability of your colleagues.

The screen below shows how things might work if your colleague tries to call you when you're in a meeting and can't talk:

AB -- 1/30/06

Recently I've been investigating human-computer-interaction aspects of presence controls in multi-modal communications.

That's a mouthful, I know. What I'm really trying to get at is, when a user has to cope with multiple communication devices and environments (instant messaging, email, mobile voice, conventional voice, VoIP, etc.), how does the user tweak the controls to let the system know who is allowed to get in touch through which device at what times and in what situations?

I was looking into this idea of "presence controls," when I came across an interesting page on Singularity's web site: "Who's there? Presence Enabled BPM." This page presents an interesting scenario showing how presence controls can enable better customer service in a call center setting.

Singularity has developed a Singularity Process Platform for business process management incorporating Microsoft's Live Communications Server. Using the Live Communications presence controls in an instant-messaging environment, the Singularity platform can determine in advance whether a worker is available to accept a task before routing the work to that person.

Here's a schematic showing where the Singularity platform sits in this process:

Singularity describes "presence-enabled" business-process management this way:

"Routing work to an absent colleague or to the wrong location wastes valuable cycle-time, and in some cases can lose a customer’s business. Workers can be out-of-office, at a different location, using a different device. Workers who are physically separated by geography and time-zone have no visibility of their colleagues’ availability or ‘presence’ Knowing a person’s presence is particularly important if a time-sensitive decision has to be made."

Singularity's example scenario describes how a presence-aware BPM system might help cope with a situation in a credit-card call center. A customer calls in to their credit-card issuer, asking for an increase in their credit limit for an emergency situation. The scenario demonstrates how presence controls help the call center agent to route the request quickly to an available supervisor, using instant messaging. The scenario is illustrated, showing screen shots from Singularity's application.

AB -- 1/30/06

My colleague Pat Barnard sent me a link to the web site for Atlantex Corp. which develops holographic user interfaces, such as this one:

This interface is called BeamOne, and Atlantex describes its operation as follows:

"Simply 'touch' the image floating in front of you to dial a cell phone, control medical equipment, change the channel, and more .... Operating as a simple 4 button keypad, BeamOne sends programmable keystrokes to your PC via the USB port."

Folks at TMC sometimes tease me because I tell them that for my next computer I want one like Tom Cruise's in Minority Report, which is operated holographically using virtual reality gloves. Here's a shot from the movie:

AB -- 1/26/06

Tello Corporation has released its "instant communication service" designed to connect users across multiple communications platforms, including voice, instant messaging and web conferencing. Tom Keating wrote up a good analysis in his blog today -- see "Tello a near term solution?"

I'm always interested in the user interface and user experience for applications. For an application that purports to merge various communication methods, I'm curious to know how it tells you who is available over which medium -- and, of even more interest, how you configure your own presence controls so that the right person will be contacting you at the right time on the right device (it's not clear to me whether Tello actually allows you to control this aspect at all).

As far as I can tell, this is the only screen shot available on the Tello web site, showing the main communication interface:

This detail shows the icons that indicate your contacts' modes and availability:

Tom Keating raises some good questions about the viability of Tello as a service:

"Honestly, I'm not convinced a hosted service provider that centralizes and consolidates all of your presence information is going to be a 'killer app' that people will pay a monthly fee. The target for this service is the SMB market, not consumers, so it's possible that SMB CEOs looking to improve employee productivity will sign off on essentially 'renting presence knowledge.' It could especially help sales people quicky and easily reach their B2B sales prospects instead of playing voicemail tag or even email tag. Still, the verdict on IM in the enterprise being a productivity enhancer or productivity waster (chatting with your spouse or friends at work) is still out. I should mention this service won't work with Skype's proprietary chat mechanism, which is the #1 used VoIP application in the world today."

AB -- 1/23/06