Assignment 3 – Tony

These two papers mainly focused on how to design a wearable system with a software agent, a heads-up display, a one-hand chording keyboard, and IR sensors sensing preseted beacons, named Remembrance Assistant (RA). RA is capable of proactively monitoring a user’s contextual activities and pushing just in time information.

RA automatically makes “notes” related to a user’s contexts by recognizing people’s faces whom the user is talking to and by sensing beacons which surround. The user can also type in “notes” with the one-hand chording keyboard. RA exports outputs which generated by the soft agent equipping designed algorithms calculating correlations between notes and contexts and shows them on the heads-up display.

We can say the intentional type-in information, the facial recognition and preseted location beacons are kind of explicit contexts. Rather than that, I am more interested in how to incorporate implicit contextual information, such as environmental atmosphere, personal emotion and physical condition to predict users’ needs. These will make the wearable assistant more embedded as being part of our mind instead of being part of our body.

Assignment1 – Tony

Inventing tools to break through innate constraints and to extend abilities is how human beings are separated from other species. From stone age to industrial era, tools originally giving more power and speed to people gradually shift to inspire intelligence and creativity of humans. Following this tendency, Engelbart envisioned the potential power of computational tool and defined a framework to open up a new path toward today’s augmented intelligence. Actually, his framework, the so called H-LAM/T system (Human using Language, Artifacts, Methodology, in which he is trained), covered most of the interaction principles of popular software/hardware nowadays.

The T seems an important part in his system. By training, users know the standard procedures of invoking predefined functions in a system, such as drawing a line. They can also generate new combinations to externalize their mental representation of thoughts, making a graph for example, after getting used to the standard ones. However, modern notions of computational system design didn’t take training for granted. GUIs tries to use visual icons and symbols to lower the burden of learning, while TUIs attempt to borrow people’s everyday experiences of objects (affordance) as a way of triggering digital function intuitively.

Context aware and adaptive tools, such as push notifications and location based applications, get rid of foregoing intention driven interaction model and provide real-time supports one second before the needs are actually generated. This will be achieved by systems’ actively monitoring users and their surroundings and constantly interpreting collected data. Comparing to conventional AI which turns machine into a living creature, the tools equipping limited AI to mainly predict people’s needs won’t cause the result that machines take over the world in science fiction.

Assignment 2 – Tony

This paper provides a very good overview of AR in terms of technologies and applications. However, most of the technologies and applications mainly focused on discover the popular visual AR. I would like to share two instant ideas which are trying to escape from the current domain. You probably have already had similar concepts as well.

Sound Filter

Currently, users always listen to music with headsets. Through this device users are perfectly isolated from the noisy reality and immerse in their own music world. What if we can invent a new kind of headset, Sound Filter, unpleasant noises or unnecessary aural information can be filtered out, and those sounds we desired are kept and amplified. It can also overlay the real sounds with digital ones harmonically to create a new experience of aural environment. With Sound Filter users can retrieve aural information of a location two days ago, or leave sounds at the location for a comping event days later.

Second Skin

Clothes actually is our second skin which protect us from extreme conditions. However, current function of clothes, the same as a headset, is to isolate users from the reality and to keep them in a constant and safe environment. When wind is blowing, if you wear a good jacket, you will actually feel nothing. What if your clothes are a kind of mediated matter equipping sensors on its outer surface and actuator on its inner one, a cold and strong wind blow can be transformed into a warm massage. When walking on the street in a dark night, a stranger’s gaze behind you can be sensed by your jacket and be transformed to a sense of poking at your back to alarm you and make you aware of potential danger.