Simplified Facial Animation Control Utilizing Novel Input Devices

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In this project, Nikolaus Bee, Bernhard Falk and Elisabeth Andre at the University of Augsburg were experimenting with new types of imput devices for facial animation. One of the more traditional controls for facial animation are sliders. However with sliders, the user can only manipulate one feature at a time. This study looks at using an xbox 360 controller and a data glove as new forms of control.

For the xbox 360 controller, the user uses the directional pad to control which portion of the face he or she is controlling: upper, middle or lower. Then the analog sticks and the trigger buttons are used to control different features on that part of the face. The data glove mapped facial movements to the fingers and different areas of the face could be selected using the buttons on the data glove. The user study showed that users were able to work much more quickly were much more comfortable using the xbox 360 controller than the data glove or traditional sliders.


I would love to try this out. I've always been into modeling and animation. This sounds like an easy and quick way to make the poses you want. I didn't really like the idea of using the data glove to control the face though. That just sounds as though it would be difficult to control and get the hang of.

Learning to Generalize for Complex Selection Tasks

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Have you ever been going through a folder on your computer trying to select only certain files. It can be really frustrating and tedious. One misstep can deselect all of your carefully made selections. Alan Ritter from the University of Washington and Sumit Basu from Microsoft Research have been looking for a way to make complex selection easier.



The first component of their selection tool is the selection classifier. This component looks for features common to the selections the users are making and weights them. Some example features include:

• The presence of any substrings of length 3 or greater in the files' names
• The value of the file extension
• the file creation date being greater or less than/equal to each of the file creation dates of the current selections
• the file size being greater or less than/equal to each of the file sizes of the current selections.

Next the regressor tries to generalize the users selections so that it can accurately predict what other files the user is going to select. Some of the features that the regressor looked at for item i were:

• The number of times the user (de)selected an item while i was (de)selected
• Whether the last example provided by the user last changed the selection state in the same round as i
• The proximity of i to the last example provided by the user.
• and more

For the user study, participants were asked to select certain groups of files using regular selection and their new auto selection tool. The tool was found to be highly accurate and many of the users said that they enjoyed it.

I would love to have this feature on my computer. This would make reorganizing files on my computer a lot easier and quicker. My only fear is that it might auto select items that I want to keep when I am selecting things I want to delete. I would be really paranoid about this and probably double and triple check.

"Pimp My Roomba": Designing for Personalization

Comment on Brandon's blog

This study done by JaYoung Sung, Rebecca Grinter and Henrick Christensen was aimed to see if people could be influenced to personalize their roomba and if so, does that have any effect on how they view their roomba. Thirty different households were each given a roomba and half of those recieved a personalization tool kit. Ten of the house holds that recieved a tool kit either ordered skins for the roombas or used stickers and letter sets. However, not everyone who ordered a skin used it.

The people that did decorate their roombas did seem to have a greater personal attachment to it. Some of them had names and were treated almost as a pet would be treated. One participant was quoted as saying that it felt, "more like our Roomba instead of a Roomba." Some of the participants who personalized their roombas felt as though their roomba did a better job. Some of the reasons given for why people did not personalize their roomba were that they didn't have time, didn't see or feel a need or could not find any decorations they like.

I thought it was very interesting just how attached some of the people became to their roombas. I know I'm pretty attached to my iPod and computer. I tend to personify them and act as though they have personalities. For example, when my computer is acting up and not behaving as it should, I say that it is angry or upset with me.

My Dating Site Thinks I'm a Loser

Comment on Jill's blog,

This study was carried out by Shailendra Rao, Tom Hurlbutt, Clifford Nass and Nundu JanakiRam from Stanford university. In this study, they wanted to see if the presence of one's own personal photo and/or the presentation intervals between recommendations on a dating site would affect the user's behavior. They began by taking 56 participants and having them set up a profile on MetaMatch, a dating website created by the researchers. The users were then required to answer questions that would be used to find their matches.

Regardless of how the participants answered the question, they were given a set of four poor matches. Half of the participants were made to answer all the questions before seeing their matches and the others saw a set of four matches after every ten questions. Of the people that received several sets of matches, some of them had their own photo present on the page when they answered the next set of questions and some did not.

The researchers found that people were much more inclined to change the way they answered the questions when they received undesirable matches and their photo was not present on the screen. I guess if you picture is there, you feel like you are lying to yourself. Of course, if you don't answer the questions truthfully, you are. They also found that the participants who received several sets of bad matches became much more frustrated than those who only received one set.

I think that this could definitely be used to find ways of improving, not just dating recommendations but different types of recommendations on other websites. However, I think that dating sites are just much more difficult just because of how personal they are. Recommendations for books are great because if I buy the book and don't like it, that's fine. On a dating site though, there is much more at stake emotionally.

Inmates are running the asylum

As I was reading this book, my first impression of Alan Cooper was that he was a jerk. He spends so much time saying how awful programmers are. As read on though, I had to agree with him, though I still thought he could have been more tactful. But sometimes you have to be loud to get someones attention. His main point is that programmers build products for programmers. Programmers design programs without taking the common user into account. This results in a system that is easy for the programmer to use (because he built it) and difficult for the user to use. Cooper believes that anyone should be able to use a piece of software with little to preferably no training. The fact that so many users feel they can't use a computer is the fault of poor design on the programmer's part and not the user's ineptitude.

Probably my favorite part of this section was toward the end of chapter 7 when he compares programmers to jocks. He says that while the jocks find a lesson in humility when they go out into the world and find that physical bullying doesn't work anymore, there is no such lesson for intellectual bullies. I've seen some of these intellectual bullies in some of my CS classes. When going over a difficult topic in some classes, there is the one person who understands and rather than help the other student's understand, they look down on their classmates and loudly proclaim that anyone who doesn't understand must be an idiot. This prevents the people who don't understand from asking questions leaving them in a confused state.

I think this attitude carries over into the professional world when programmers don't understand why users don't understand how to use their program. "It's just a simple keyboard shortcut!" Yeah, one that you came up with and told no one about. Programmers need to realize the importance of good design. They also need to realize that they have studied this field a lot more than most people. Users aren't stupid (most of them), programmers have just had more training. And that is my soap box I found while reading this book.

Fast Gaze Typing with an Adjustable Dwell Time

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Paivi Majaranta, Ulla-Kaija Ahola and Oleg Spakov were trying to find a way to increase the typing speed of those that use gaze typing. Gaze typing is a form of text entry where the user's eyes are tracked and registers a keystroke when they stare at a key for a predetermined amount of time. Because of this register time, this limits the typing speed of the users to 5-10 words per minute.



For their system, they allowed the user to adjust the gaze time required to register a stroke. They found that within one or two days, many of the participants were able to greatly reduce the gaze time and still maintain high accuracy in their typing. In this study, the grand mean of the typing speed went from 6.9 wpm to 19.89 wpm with little significant reduction in accuracy.



I think that for something like gaze typing, an adjustable dwell time is very important. The more the user uses it, the more proficient he or she will become. By allowing the user to adjust the dwell time, the user's ability is not limited by the hardware. This allows the user to function more efficiently.

The VoiceBot: A Voice Controlled Robot Arm

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In this paper, Brandi House, Jonathan Malkin and Jeff Bilmes look at modifying the vocal joy stick in such a way that it can be used to control a robot arm. They first built a 2d model and then extended to to the 3d robotic arm. They tested the robotic arm with multiple control schemes including forward kinematic, where each joint is controlled separately, and inverse kinematic, where the user directly controls the end furthest from the base and the other joints are positioned using an inverse kinematic solver.

The robot arm was controlled by the user making various vowel sounds at varying pitches and volumes. For the tests, fore each control scheme several users were given instructions and was allowed up to ten minutes to practice. They were then given the task of using the robot arm to pick up two pieces of candy and place them in a target area. It was found that the users favored and worked better with the inverse kinematic control scheme as opposed to the forward kinematic controls.

I do think that this could be usefull for disabled people. I also think it could be interesting to watch some one use this. It would kind of sound like they are singing. Also, we already have several other forms of controll for the handicapped like gazing and brain sensors.

Sacred Imagery in Techno-Spiritual Design

Comment on Nate's post.

With technology making its way into every aspect of our lives, it is important to consider how we design for those areas. For many people, religion is a large and important part of their lives. Many people hang religious images in their households to remind them of the principles and rules of their religion. Susan P. Wyche, Kelly E. Caine, Benjamin K. Davison, Shwetak N. Patel,

Michael Arteaga, and Rebecca E. Grinter did a study on integrating religious images into applications that have a religious purpose.

The group experimented using a mobile application that showed Muslims when it was time to pray. They incorporated a lot of imagery that is important in Islamic culture: Nature, Light, Mosques, the color green. A user study showed that the Muslim users of this program found that the imagery helped them to be more focused on the important aspects of their religion.

Being religious my self, I know that Christian symbols sometimes help me focus my life more. I would like to see ways that sacred imagery could be used in applications for other religions as well. Of course it would be very important to research imagery of which ever religion you are designing for. This could also be applied to secular applications. One could research what symbols evoke certain thoughts in the user.

Simulated Augmented Reality Windshield Display as a Cognitive Mapping Aid for Elder Driver Navigation

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In this paper, Seung Jun Kim and Anind K. Dey are developing an augmented reality windshield display that will aid in navigation and reduce distractions and cognitive load for the user. Many elderly drivers find it difficult to focus on the road and use a GPS device at the same time. This windshield would superimpose a map on the windshield that came down to meet the road. This would hopefully make it easier for the elderly to navigate in the car and to reduce the amount of required eye movement.

In their experiments, Kim and Dey created a driving simulation that gave the user a route to follow that included several turns, traffic signals, stop signs and pedestrians. The user would complete one route using a standard GPS device and then complete a different route using the AR display. The study was conducted with both elderly (>65) and younger (19-41) drivers. They also used a gaze tracker to track eye movement. In the experiment, the participants were far less likely to miss turns or violate traffic laws when using the AR simulation as opposed to the standard GPS. It was also discovered that there was far less eye movement and distraction.

I would love to have this kind of display in my car. I don't have GPS so when I am traveling somewhere new, I print out a map. This can be difficult because I don't always know my exact position on the map and trying to read the directions while driving. This would make navigation so much easier and safer. I would like to see this implemented in an actual car and see if in a similar study, the same results are found. However, like Kim says in the paper, this just cant be done very well yet.

Designing for the Self: Making Products that Help People Become the Person they Desire to Be

Comment on Patrick's blog.

In this paper, John Zimmerman designed six objects for use in the lives of everyday parents to help them become the parents they want to be. Through this, he hopes to discover how product attachment theory can be applied to design. This way, it would become easier to design products that people not only are comfortable using, but enjoy using.

Zimmerman created the following products for the study:

• a simple clock that uses a moon and a sun to tell children when they are supposed to stay in bed and when they can get up
• a digital picture frame that adjusts the pictures shown based on who is present
• a sports bag that notifies children if they don't have all the equipment they need for that day
• a calendar that keeps track of a child's medication and medical history
• a simple interface called Magonote through which anyone, including children, can operate several networked household devices.
• and a mobile zen application designed to keep Buddhists connected to their community

Zimmerman was then able to come up with six categories linked to product attachment: role engagement, control, affiliation, ability vs bad habit, long term goals and ritual. An example of role engagement/ritual is that the clock requires that the parent set it each night so that it becomes integrated into the goodnight routine and helps the parent focus on this one thing. This is analogous to the ritual bedtime story. Many parents develop an attachment to the bedtime stories they read their children. An example of ability vs bad habit would be the calendar. It helps the parent remain on top of things which presents a good image to their child.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what Zimmerman accomplished other than creating useful household items. Most of his explanation of how he believes the devices would fit into the six categories. He didn't seem to mention any experiments about these products though. I would like to see a user study done with these products to see if the owners really do become attached to these products.

Eyespy: Supporting Navigation through Play

Comment on Bill's blog.

Eyespy is an interesting program built by Marek Bell, Stuart Reeves, Barry Brown, Scott Sherwood, Donny McMillan, John Ferguson and Matthew Chalmers that uses a game to get humans to build a database of pictures that are useful for navigating an area. How is this accomplished? The game it self is divided into two parts. First, the player goes around (literally anywhere) and creates photo or text tags in places for other players to find. However, these need to be easily identifiable since when another player 'confirms' your tag, you get extra points. The second part of the game is to find tags created by other players. Each day you are sent five photo tags and five text tags. By finding these you and the player that created the tag earn points.

The tag and confirm portions must be done in approximately the same locations. For example, if I recognize where a picture was taken, I can't just confirm it from my house (unless the picture was taken at my house). I have to go to the place where the picture was taken. The way this works is that the phone you are playing on detects the nearby wireless networks to determine your location.

The makers of Eyespy then conducted a user study with images captured from Eyespy and images pulled from Flickr. Two routes were created through a large public area and users used photos pulled from either Eyespy or Flickr exclusively to try and find their way through the route. The users that used the Eyespy tags were able to identify the locations on the route much faster and with much greater accuracy than those that used the Flickr tags. This could be used to help aid tourists in navigating unfamiliar areas.

I think this is a great way to improve location tags on images, especially if the Eyespy becomes more widespread. It is a very reliable way for getting identifiable images since the ones that are most identifiable will most likely get the highest scores. And the incentive of high scores encourages players to try and snap easily identifiable pictures. I would love to see if this 'human algorithm' (as the authors call it) could be applied to other areas of computer science.

Ethnography Project

Brandon Jarratt and I both work at jobs were we are constantly bombarded with questions about computers (Help Desk Central and the SCC respectively). We are interested in keeping track of what type of people ask us what questions to see if certain demographics have more computer trouble than others.

Do certain demographics struggle more with wireless internet? Is the type of machine or OS linked to the type of people who have more trouble than others? These are just a few questions that we may be able to answer with this study.

The Design of Everyday Things

The Design of Everyday things is basically a book all about making sure that simple objects should be simple to use. The author goes through several stories about people he has seen or talked to that have had trouble opening doors, operating VCR's and other devices that people frequently use. He states that there needs to be clues or signals or signs on these everyday devices so that a user has to spend very little, if any, time trying to figure out how to use the device. Often, a designer will design an object or device with only aesthetics in mind and doesn't consider the usability of the object. You can make a door as beautiful and elegant as you want, but if no one can figure out how to open it, what is the point? However, if you are designing a door that is meant to be hidden, it's probably a good thing if the average person cannot figure out how to open it.

Ever since I read this book, I've taken a notice to how usable (or unusable) things can be. The other day, one of my professors spent over five minutes looking for the switch for the projector screen. One would thing that it would be on the wall near the projection screen or on the podium next to the computer terminal, but it wasn't. Also, I used Internet Explorer the other day, because there were no other browsers installed on the computer, and I noticed that some of the tabbed web pages at the top were different colors. I found this feature annoying so I right clicked on the tabs and then clicked "Ungroup Tabs".

How did I know to do this? I had never seen this feature before. I easily noticed that whenever I had multicolored tabs, there were always at least two that were the same color. I then realized that all the tabs of the same color were links from the original page that I had opened in new tabs and could be "grouped" according to that. I was able to figure all that out in very little time and without really thinking about it. That is good design.

Ever since reading "The Design of Everyday Things", little things like that now stick out to me and I believe that I will be more concious of how a user would interact with interfaces I design as a result.