Ivan Bretan

WEST: a Web browser for small terminals

We describe WEST, a WEb browser for Small Terminals, that aims to solve some of the problems associated with accessing web pages on hand-held devices. Through a novel combination of text reduction and focus+context visualization, users can access web pages from a very limited display environment, since the system will provide an overview of the contents of a web page even when it is too large to be displayed in its entirety. To make maximum use of the limited resources available on a typical hand-held terminal, much of the most demanding work is done by a proxy server, allowing the terminal to concentrate on the task of providing responsive user interaction. The system makes use of some interaction concepts reminiscent of those defined in the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), making it possible to utilize the techniques described here for WAP-compliant devices and services that may become available in the near future.

A speech to speech translation system built from standard components

This paper describes a speech to speech translation system using standard components and a suite of generalizable customization techniques. The system currently translates air travel planning queries from English to Swedish. The modular architecture is designed to be easy to port to new domains and languages, and consists of a pipelined series of processing phases. The output of each phase consists of multiple hypotheses; statistical preference mechanisms, the data for which is derived from automatic processing of domain corpora, are used between each pair of phases to filter hypotheses. Linguistic knowledge is represented throughout the system in declarative form. We summarize the architectures of the component systems and the interfaces between them, and present initial performance results.

Interaction models, reference, and interactivity in speech interfaces to virtual environments

The enhancement of a virtual reality environment with a speech interface is described. Some areas where the virtual reality environment benefits from the spoken modality are identified as well as some where the interpretation of natural language utterances benefits from being situated in a highly structured environment. The issue of interaction metaphors for this configuration of interface modalities is investigated.

Achieving virtual presence with a semi-autonomous robot through a multi-reality and speech control interface

This paper describes a model for a complex human-machine system where a human operator controls a remote robot through the mediation of a distributed virtual environment with a language interface. The system combines speech controlled graphical immersive environments with the live video from a robot working in a real environment. The worlds are synchronized and updated based on operator selections, commands and robot actions. This system allows the user to have a powerful tool with a high level of abstraction to create and control autonomous robots, thus making possible the realization of single and possibly multiple real-world autonomous robot applications.

Concurrent engineering for an interactive TV interface

The design of a user environment for a video-on-demand service through an interdisciplinary style of collaboration called “concurrent engineering” is described. The process encompasses pre-prototype behavioral studies, traditional user studies, graphical design of interface objects, industrial design of input devices and interaction design of interface dialogue.

Simulation-based dialogue design for speech-controlled telephone services

A design methodology for speech-controlled telephone services has been developed using W~ard-of-Oz simulations as the principal mechanism for evaluating and getting input for dialogue design. This methodology may enable service developers to support dialogues that are optimal with respect to naturalness, especially on a pragmatic level, given the technical restrictions at hand. METHODOLOGY DEVELOPMENT Automatic speech understanding is becoming an increasingly attractive option for providing advanced services to a broad audience while exploiting optimally the limited bandwidth of the telephone channel. Most existing speeeh-controlled services are based around small voeabuhries and isolated word recognition, but as continuous speech recognition technology matures, this will change. Our hypothesis in the DISA (Design for Input Speech Adaptation) project has been that, regardless of the quality of the speech recognition and natural language processing technology available, all such services may benefit from having dialogues derived from task analysis and Wizard-of-Oz simulation studies. In other words, even though natural syntax and semantics cannot be supported, natural pragmatic may still be of use (and to some extent compensate for the limitations). While our studies have produced both servieeand dialogue-specific da~ obtaining meta-results has been the real objective, giving us feedback on how to pursue simulationcentered dialogue design. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material k granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of ACM. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission. CHI’ Companion 95, Denver, Colorado, USA

Leave the office, bring your colleagues: design solutions for mobile teamworkers

One of the keys to successful deployment of mobile multimedia technology among professionals lies in identifying inherently distributed teams working under real-time constraints in dynamic field environments where the need to increase the efficiency of co-ordination, communication and collaboration is apparent. We report on some findings from investigating such non-office/out-of-office user-groups, and discuss the design of a portable environment for supporting the virtual reinforcement of teams, with special emphasis on co-worker status monitoring with respect to process phase, availability, geographical position etc.

V: a visual query language for a multimodal environment

V is a two-dimensional, visual, direct manipulation query language designed for use in a multimodal environment that includes a natural language processing component. The language has the expressiveness of at least full first order predicate logic, including some higher-order extensions that provide a framework within the language itself for navigating and browsing the query domain. The language focuses on the visualisation of the logic structure of queries and is intended as a complement to natural language, providing reification and persistence of discourse objects, together with support for bidirectional paraphrasing and user controlled discourse management.