Research Talk: Toward Designing Implicit User Interfaces for Rich Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

The more technology is improved, the higher computer performance is achieved. However, communication channels between the human and computer have still been relying on the same input techniques. Consequently, a low-bandwidth communication channel restrains human and computer from truly collaborating, even though each individual is a powerful resource.

In this talk, in order to address the problem, the concept of Implicit User Interfaces (IUI) that deal with implicit interactions between the human and computer is introduced. IUI builds additional communication channels by using human‘s physiological information as passive inputs, allowing the computer to initiate actions without waiting for the human’s explicit commands, which is a fundamentally different interaction style from that of conventional human-computer interaction. Meanwhile, designing IUI introduces questions such as: 1) what the difference between explicit and implicit inputs will be; 2) how the implicit inputs will be handled; 3) what implicit interactions will be; and 4) how and when the implicit interactions will be driven. In order to discuss these questions and to offer a higher-level definition of IUI, a case example, Phylter - an early phase prototype built on the IUI framework that filters notifications to the wearable computer based on the wear’s implicit physiological input - will be presented.