Christopher S. Campbell

Tradeoffs in displaying peripheral information

Peripheral information is information that is not central to a persons current task, but provides the person the opportunity to learn more, to do a better job, or to keep track of less important tasks. Though peripheral information displays are ubiquitous, they have been rarely studied. For computer users, a common peripheral display is a scrolling text display that provides announcements, sports scores, stock prices, or other news. In this paper, we investigate how to design peripheral displays so that they provide the most information while having the least impact on the users performance on the main task. We report a series of experiments on scrolling displays aimed at examining tradeoffs between distraction of scrolling motion and memorability of information displayed. Overall, we found that continuously scrolling displays are more distracting than displays that start and stop, but information in both is remembered equally well. These results are summarized in a set of design recommendations.

A robust algorithm for reading detection

As video cameras become cheaper and more pervasive, there is now increased opportunity for user interfaces to take advantage of user gaze data. Eye movements provide a powerful source of information that can be used to determine user intentions and interests. In this paper, we develop and test a method for recognizing when users are reading text based solely on eye-movement data. The experimental results show that our reading detection method is robust to noise, individual differences, and variations in text difficulty. Compared to a simple detection algorithm, our algorithm reliably, quickly, and accurately recognizes and tracks reading. Thus, we provide a means to capture normal user activity, enabling interfaces that incorporate more natural interactions of human and computer.

Facilitating navigation in information spaces

A series of experiments was conducted to evaluate whether simple hyperlink annotations?traffic lights that represent Internet connection speeds?can facilitate web navigation. Traffic lights are small red, yellow or green images added around the anchor text of each link indicating its connection speed, red for slow, yellow for somewhat fast and green for fastest. The first two experiments showed that traffic lights do not facilitate perceptual processes involved in web navigation (i.e. link localization and visual search). However, traffic lights also do not distract from the process of finding links in hypertext documents and, thus have no perceptual performance cost. The third experiment showed that traffic lights facilitate web navigation performance by improving link evaluation and decision processes. This improvement is particularly marked when link relevance is low or undifferentiated. It was concluded that supplying users with information about Internet connection speeds improves web navigation performance. Thus, traffic lights provide functional cues for efficiently navigating the web.

Attentive agents

In the anticipated symbiotic partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking.J.C.R. Licklider, 1960

Digital jewelry: wearable technology for everyday life

Pervasive technology devices that intend to be worn must not only meet our functional requirements but also our social, emotional, and aesthetic needs. Current pervasive devices such as the PDA or cell phone are more portable than wearable, yet still they elicit strong consumer demand for intuitive interfaces and well-designed forms. Looking to the future of wearable pervasive devices, we can imagine an even greater demand for meaningful forms for objects nestled so close to our bodies. They will need to reflect our tastes and moods, and allow us to express our personalities, cultural beliefs, and values. Digital Jewelry explores a new wearable technology form that is based in jewelry design, not in technology. Through prototypes and meaningful scenarios, digital jewelry offers new ideas to consider in the design of wearable devices.

From self-service to super-service: a resource mapping framework for co-creating value by shifting the boundary between provider and customer

Improved understanding of how interactions between service providers and customers create value, along with advances in technology, can expand and redefine the roles of both provider and customer in the service delivery process. The traditional boundary between provider and customer can shift toward self service, with the customer performing many of the tasks previously done by the provider, as in self-service check-in at the airport or self-serve salad bars in restaurants. Alternatively, the boundary can shift in the opposite direction—toward what we define as super service—with the provider performing many tasks previously done by the customer, such as a car rental company that delivers vehicles to customers or automatic bill paying services provided by banks. Why do providers shift this boundary in one direction or the other? Increased competition, changing customer attitudes, and new technologies all contribute to the development of new self-service and new super-service delivery configurations. But these new configurations are only effective when they can create additional value for both provider and customer. In this paper, we introduce a resource mapping framework for shifting the service boundary effectively. This framework allows us to examine the continuum of options from self service to super service from a service systems perspective to identify conditions under which shifting the provider-customer boundary creates value.

Evaluation of Visual Notification Cues for Ubiquitous Computing

With increased use of mobile information technology and increased amounts of information comes the need to simplify information presentation. This research considers whether low-information-rate displays (such as those used in mobile devices) can provide effective information awareness. An experiment was performed to measure the performance/size tradeoff of visual displays ranging in size from two LEDs to nine LEDs, and using a number of display characteristics – i.e., color and blinking in various combinations. Results show a reliable tradeoff between performance (participant response time and accuracy) and display size (number of LEDs). However, even the full set of 27 messages can be conveyed with high recognition accuracy using only three LEDs by mapping the messages into color and position. Thus, mobile devices with micro-level form factors can be designed to convey critical information and provide effective notifications. Future work and a prototype developed from this work are discussed.

Supporting notable information in office work

This paper reports a study examining how current electronic technology (e.g., PDAs, e-mail, laptops, cellphones) and classic paper-based tools (e.g., post-its, notepads, scrap paper) are used to manage to-do lists, appointments, and other types of notable information. Many of the users interviewed report that notes need to be temporary, viewable, mobile, postable, transferable, short, easy to create and destroy. Paper-based tools are clearly preferred over electronic for managing notable information, and are used much more often. PDAs are almost never used for notable information because they lack high-resolution screens, are bulky, and require too much time to enter new information. E-mail is the most used electronic tool and is commonly given dedicated screen space so that it was always visible. Design recommendations for electronic office technology are presented.

An architecture for developing attentive information systems

Attentive systems attend to what users do so that they can attend to what users need. Such systems track user behavior, model user interests, and anticipate user desires and actions. Because the general class of attentive systems is broad — ranging from human butlers to web sites that profile users — we have focused specifically on attentive information systems, which observe user actions with information resources, model user information states, and suggest information that might be helpful to users. In particular, we describe Simple User Interest Tracker (Suitor), an architecture for developing attentive information systems that track computer users through multiple channels — eye gaze, web browsing, application use, to determine interests and to try to satisfy information needs. By observing behavior and modeling users, Suitor can be used to find and display potentially relevant information that is both timely and non-disruptive to the users ongoing activities.

Relescope: an experiment in accelerating relationships

Busy academics and professionals are being called upon to manage more and more relationships. Many details of collaboration are accessible in digital libraries and other repositories. With Relationship-Oriented Computing, we posit that network information embedded in these repositories can be leveraged to improve the human need to manage and form the most productive relationships. To explore this idea, we developed a relationship-network application, called Relescope, and deployed it at the ACM CSCW 2004 conference. It provided a personalized report to attendees based on publication and citation information. The report was intended to provide concrete insights into the relationship-network that could be acted upon. Results of a survey showed that 52% of responders used their report to recognize and talk to others or plan which talks to attend. People with fewer collaborators were more inclined to use Relescope than the people with the most collaborators. Lessons learned and future work are discussed.