Interacting with Smart Environments - Ph.D. Thesis Presentation

Presentation made for my Ph.D. final exam (dissertation) at Politecnico di Torino, 20 March 2014

Transcript

1. Interacting with Smart Environments USERS, INTERFACES, AND DEVICES Luigi De Russis XXVI Cycle
2. Scenario • Smart Environment – small world where all kinds of smart devices are continuously working to make inhabitants’ lives more comfortable • Important to investigate the user’s perspective in interacting with her surrounding – no predefined interaction situation or context – interaction can happen casually or accidentally • Large and sparse field – the home is the selected target environment 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 2
3. Main Problems • Effective interaction between users and their Smart Environment is still a challenging aspect – few solutions exist, in the literature • People must (and want to) remain in control – they want to do “the job” • Most of the existing solutions – are deeply integrated inside a specific system – do not present a set of requirements for reproducibility and further validations 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 3
4. Contributions and Goal 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 4 This thesis aims at improving the interaction between users and Smart Environments – by exploring challenging and different approaches in key areas – by providing a set of tools and applications, loosely coupled with the underlying intelligent system – based on solid and explicit requirements – by allowing replicability of the found solutions
5. DOGeye • Challenge: effective eye-based interaction patterns • Multimodal eye-based application – enable people with motor disabilities to control and manage their homes • Requirements from the COGAIN European Network of Excellence • Good results from user testing with both experienced and not experienced eye-tracker users 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 5 Publication • D. Bonino, E. Castellina, F. Corno, L. De Russis, “DOGeye: Controlling your Home with Eye Interaction”, Interacting with Computers, 2011
6. WristHome • Challenge: effective interaction pattern with ubiquitous devices (tabs size) • Wearable Home Access Point – low-cost and off-the-shelf – handle messages coming from the environment – quick access to commands • Requirements from literature • Preliminary user testing and focus group shows interest in real-world usage 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 6 Publications • D. Bonino, F. Corno, L. De Russis, “dWatch: a Personal Wrist Watch for Smart Environments”, 3rd International Conference on Ambient Systems, Networks and Technologies, 2012 • L. De Russis, D. Bonino, F. Corno, “The Smart Home on Your Wrist”, HomeSys: a Ubicomp workshop, 2013
7. RulesBook • Challenge: effective visual environment programming for end-users • Rule-based task delegation – empower end-users to define desired autonomy level • Requirements from unstructured interviews – with people living in and managing smart homes • Preliminary user testing confirms – selected features – viability of the approach 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 7 Publication • D. Bonino, F. Corno, L. De Russis, “A User-Friendly Interface for Rules Composition in Intelligent Environments”, International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence, 2011
8. WattsUp: User Survey • Challenge: design of an innovative user interface – to incentivize responsible and “green” energy consumption behaviors in domestic environments • Development of a user survey, published on the Internet – presented the designed interface working in 2 different modalities – collected information about user understanding, and opinions or ideas on the proposed interaction paradigms • 992 replies were received – suggestions were given to improve the presented interface 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 8 Publication • D. Bonino, F. Corno, L. De Russis, “Home Energy Consumption Feedback: A User Survey”, Energy and Buildings, 2012
9. WattsUp • Challenge: use AI to enable fine-grained UI feedback in a cost-effective way • An ontology has been designed – to enable the intelligent system to tackle the survey’s requirements • Mobile application – built upon the design and results of the user survey • Small user testing of the overall system – 6 people – not in a real home (in lab) – AI results indistinguishable from sensor-based values 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 9
10. Summary of Contributions Name Requirements Area Validation Publication DOGeye EU project interaction, eye-tracking User testing Journal WristHome Literature interaction, wearable User testing Conference (2 papers) RulesBook Unstructured interviews visual programming, mobile User testing Conference WattsUp Web Survey Semantic Web, mobile User testing Journal 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 10 Other activities - a book chapter and two journal papers
11. Future Works • Interactions using sensing and actuating devices already present in the environment – e.g., lighting system could provide a viable and unobtrusive output mean in several conditions • Wearable Computing for sensing and communication – in “medical” settings, like a nursing house (for people with disabilities) – for gaming and education • On-Body Interaction – relatively new field – move input/output on the body, e.g., projected user interfaces or bio-feedbacks 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 11
12. Thank you! QUESTIONS? Luigi De Russis luigi.derussis@polito.it XXVI Ph.D. Cycle
13. License • This work is licensed under the Creative Commons “Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3,0)” License. • You are free: – to Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work – to Remix - to adapt the work • Under the following conditions: – Attribution - You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). – Noncommercial - You may not use this work for commercial purposes. – Share Alike - If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. • To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/license/by-nc-sa/3.0/ 3/24/2014 Interacting with Smart Environments 13