Towards Disappearing User Interfaces for Ubiquitous Computing: Human Enhancement from Sixth Sense to Super Senses
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J Ambient Intell Human Comput DOI 10.1007/s12652-016-0409-9 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Towards disappearing user interfaces for ubiquitous computing: human enhancement from sixth sense to super senses 1 1 Terence K. L. Hui • R. Simon Sherratt Received: 25 March 2016 / Accepted: 5 September 2016 Ó The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract The enhancement of human senses electronically 1 Introduction is possible when pervasive computers interact unnoticeably with humans in ubiquitous computing. The design of The growing importance of human computer interaction computer user interfaces towards ‘‘disappearing’’ forces the (HCI) is a result of the widespread deployment of com- interaction with humans using a content rather than a menu puters connecting with humans. Early computer users were driven approach, thus the emerging requirement for huge computer specialists and programmers when the major number of non-technical users interfacing intuitively with design goals for computers were processing-power and billions of computers in the Internet of Things is met. processing-speed during the time a single mainframe Learning to use particular applications in ubiquitous com- computer occupied a whole room. Usability became a puting is either too slow or sometimes impossible so the profound issue when personal computers prevailed in the design of user interfaces must be naturally enough to late 70s since personnel and non-professionals had joined facilitate intuitive human behaviours. Although humans the user group with no prior computer science knowledge from different racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds own (Shackel 1997). Ubiquitous Computing proposed by Wei- the same physiological sensory system, the perception to ser (1991)as‘‘The Computer for The 21st Century’’ has the same stimuli outside the human bodies can be different. envisioned future computers to be invisibly living with A novel taxonomy for disappearing user interfaces (DUIs) humans, hence the range of user types has again widened. to stimulate human senses and to capture human responses With the popularity of the Internet in recent decades, the is proposed. Furthermore, applications of DUIs are concept of internet of things (IoT) further boosts the reviewed. DUIs with sensor and data fusion to simulate the applications of ubiquitous computing to connect almost sixth sense is explored. Enhancement of human senses everything electronic to the Internet. The ultimate result is through DUIs and context awareness is discussed as the an unprecedented demand for better HCI technology to groundwork enabling smarter wearable devices for inter- cope with the needs for the huge number of non-technical facing with human emotional memories. users interacting with billions of network-connected computers. Keywords Disappearing user interface (DUI) Á Natural Human computer interaction is a multidisciplinary user interface (NUI) Á Ubiquitous computing interface Á technology that heavily focuses on human-centric user Context awareness Á Emotional memories interface (UI) design. Extensive research on the natural sciences not only provides extremely functional UIs through tangible and intangible media, but smart algo- & Terence K. L. Hui rithms based on computational intelligence also help pre- [email protected] dict human behaviours through activity recognition; thus R. Simon Sherratt tailor-made responses are astutely delivered to individuals. [email protected] Further enhancement of the HCI’s humanisation quality is 1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Biological found from affective computing that enables computers to Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK understand human emotions (Sunghyun et al. 2015; 123 T. K. L. Hui, R. S. Sherratt Weerasinghe et al. 2014), and Computational humour classified the five basic senses. Physiological comparison studies that provides a more relaxing interaction environ- of the same sensory type between humans and animals ment (Nijholt 2014; Nijholt et al. 2006). Collaboration reveals that some animal sensory systems are more sensi- between researchers from applied and social science is the tive, some of them can even sense the seismic waves before core enabler for a successful multicultural and multi-ethnic earthquakes happen (Yamauchi et al. 2014), thus UABs HCI design; however, a seamless integration does not (unusual animal behaviours) can be applied as a natural always occur. Dourish and Bell (2011) reviewed the cur- disaster sense for human beings. Spiritual Sixth Sense is a rent gaps in HCI research for Ubiquitous Computing from controversial subject that many attempts have been tried to an ethnographic perspective with the conclusion that social prove without success, but abnormal behaviours such as and cultural consideration will enhance future HCI design clairvoyance, clairaudience, remote viewing, etc., keep on through a socio-technical practice. A novel way to con- happening without logical explanation. Collection of local necting multidisciplinary researchers is equally important and/or remote sensory data through a combination of var- as the basic research but is not obvious in the current HCI ious DUIs may be a possible way to simulate those para- field. normal sixth sense activities based on ubiquitous sensors Natural user interface (NUI) is an emerging trend in HCI and scientific computational intelligent algorithms (see where humans can interact naturally with computers Table 2). Despite missing formal definition, super senses instead of using conventional methods such as CLI (com- are generally referred to as superior to normal human mand line interface) or GUI (graphical user interface). sensory system. As stated above, there are many animal Despite its high prevalence in both academic research and sensory organs having superior sensitivity to the human commercial applications (Bhowmik 2013), NUIs are criti- counterparts. The following discussions will treat super cised as being ‘‘artificial naturality’’ and many types of sense as an enhancement of the extended human senses NUIs are not representing natural human behaviours based on DUI connectivity to IoT and the associated especially gesture based interactions (Malizia and Bellucci Ubiquitous Computing technologies. 2012; Norman 2010; Norman and Nielsen 2010). This This paper proposes a novel taxonomy of DUI tech- paper reviews the usefulness of NUIs from a different nologies from the result of a literature survey on related direction by considering only invisible or ‘‘disappearing’’ HCI topics and research. Section 2 explains the classifi- natural interfaces in Ubiquitous Computing environments. cation criteria for the DUI technologies with reference to Disappearing UI (DUI) is a logical provision of natural the human input and output systems. Simulating the Sixth HCI and the term ‘‘disappearing’’ in this paper refers to Sense, enhancing human senses and enabling the Super tangible and intangible UIs that exist and work well but are Senses as applications of DUIs are discussed in Sect. 3. not noticeable by humans. They are classified into three Finally we conclude the paper in Sect. 4 with indicators for main categories: (i) human body as DUIs, (ii) edible and further research. implantable DUIs, and (iii) wearable DUIs. Individual HCI technologies and algorithms have been researched with favourable results and they normally target certain func- 2 Disappearing user interfaces tional areas and particular user groups. A novel taxonomy is proposed in this paper to classify and compare the dif- Natural user interface provides an opportunity to enhance ferent types of state-of-the-art DUIs, together with their user experience by interacting naturally with computers. advantages and disadvantages according to their intended Technologies such as gesture based detection, voice and areas of application. Researchers and industry personnel facial expression recognition are typical NUI technologies can use this classification as a guideline to select and that are promoted as better than traditional HCIs like CLI combine different DUIs to form a holistic natural UI for and GUI methods which have been claimed as hard-to- certain group of users in ubiquitous computing. For learn and hard-to-use for computer illiterate people. Pre- example, car drivers will be alerted when they are not sumably natural human behaviours are the only require- paying attention to the roads using a speech interface based ment to effectively use NUI, and no training is required on abnormal behaviour discovery from visual posture since natural way of interaction should be intuitive. detection, and elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease may Macaranas et al. (2015) reviewed the 3 major issues require constant monitoring of their activities to detect their undermining the intuition of NUI as (i) no common stan- whereabouts and predict their behaviours with non-inva- dard; (ii) unexpected users’ experiences; and (iii) lack of sive and non-intrusive sensors. affordance. However, intuition is subjective and varies An interesting DUI application is to enhance human according to cultures and users’ past experiences, thus senses. Researchers relentlessly proposed and proved the global standard may be indefinable (Malizia and Bellucci existence of extra human sense organs since Aristotle first 2012; Lim 2012). 123 Towards disappearing user interfaces for ubiquitous computing... DUI is a natural HCI focusing on interaction with the edible electronic artefacts can interact