Human-Computer Interfaces for Wearable Computers

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Human-Computer Interfaces for Wearable Computers Human-Computer Interfaces for Wearable Computers A Systematic Approach to Development and Evaluation Hendrik Witt Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Ingenieurwissenschaften Vorgelegt im Fachbereich 3 (Mathematik und Informatik) der Universit¨at Bremen Gutachter: 1. Prof. Dr. Otthein Herzog Universit¨at Bremen (Deutschland), Lehrstuhl fur¨ Kunstliche¨ Intelligenz 2. Prof. Dr. Thad E. Starner Georgia Institute of Technology (USA), Director of Contextual Computing Group Datum des Promotionskolloquiums: 10.12.2007 This research has been partly funded by the European Commission through IST project wearIT@work: Empowering the Mobile Worker by Wearable Computing (No. IP 004216-2004). Preface First of all, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude and thanks to my adviser, Prof. Dr. Otthein Herzog, who provided me with the opportunity to carry out my research. His constant support and the fruitful discussions we had throughout the years have strengthened me as a researcher. I am also very grateful for the extent of freedom he gave me for conducting my research and the financial funding he supplied me with to travel to various international conferences all around the world. Secondly, my gratitude goes to my research committee, Prof. Dr. Thad E. Starner, Prof. Dr. Andreas Breiter, and Prof. Dr. Michael Lawo, for their time, support, and encouragement. I am very proud of winning Thad E. Starner, one of the pioneers of wear- able computing, for my research committee. His enthusiasm about wearable computers and his great experience in that field have motivated and helped me a lot in making my research more concise. Also, I am very thankful to Andreas Breiter and Michael Lawo for their continuous feedback and tips in revising my papers and suggesting ways to tackle problems. My special thanks go again to Michael Lawo who taught me, with his great experience in management, an efficient way to deal with all kinds of problems. I like to thank my research colleagues, Tom Nicolai, Christian Dils, and St´ephane Beauregard, for their help and the possibility to discuss problems whenever needed. I also thank Dr. Holger Kenn, the scientific leader of our wearable computing laboratory. He criticized my work, helped me with technical problems, and especially with his tremendous knowledge of all things not related to computer science. Very special thanks go to Dr. Mikael Drugge with whom I worked together during and after his three months’ stay at our research group. I am very grateful for his feedback on my work and the inspiring discussions we had even when he got his Ph.D. and already worked in industry. My research was partly funded by the European Commission through IST project “wearIT@work: Empowering the Mobile Worker by Wearable Computing” (No. IP 004216-2004). My gratitude and appreciation go to all the 36 wearIT@work project partners for their fruitful work and contribution to my research. v vi Preface My deepest gratitude goes to my parents, Artur and Ramona Witt, for their love and support. They created the environment I needed to concentrate on my research. Without their support and help over nearly three decades, I would neither have studied at a university nor had I ever tried to apply for a Ph.D. Finally, I am also very much indebted to my partner, Anna Griesing, for all her help, love, and patience throughout the long time of being a student. She kept everyday things away from me whenever I needed time to work on my thesis. Particularly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to her for the support during the last months of my Ph.D. work when I was handicapped with a broken leg. Without you all this thesis would never have been possible. Thank you! Hendrik Witt Abstract Over the last decades desktop computers for professional and consumer applications have become a quasi standard, both in owning them and being able to use them for various applications. Recent years are, however, dominated by a new trend in computing: The mobile use of computers. The research presented in this thesis examines user interfaces for wearable computers. Wearable computers are a special kind of mobile computers that can be worn on the body. Furthermore, they integrate themselves even more seamlessly into different activities than a mobile phone or a personal digital assistant can. The thesis investigates the development and evaluation of user interfaces for wearable computers. In particular, it presents fundamental research results as well as support- ing software tools for wearable user interface development. The main contributions of the thesis are a new evaluation method for user interfaces of wearable computers and a model-driven software toolkit to ease interface development for application developers with limited human-computer interaction knowledge. Besides presenting a prototypical implementation of the so-called WUI-Toolkit (Wear- able User Interface Toolkit), empirical results of three experiments conducted to study the management of interruptions with gesture and speech input in wearable computing are discussed. Study results allow for deriving design guidelines for forthcoming interface designs. Both, the toolkit and the evaluation method, are essential parts of a generic user interface development approach proposed in the thesis. Summing up, the research presented motivates and validates the research hypothesis that user interfaces for wearable computers are inherently different to stationary desktop interfaces as well as mobile computer interfaces and, therefore, have to be designed dif- ferently to make them usable without being a burden for humans. In connection with this, the thesis provides new contributions for the design and evaluation of wearable user interfaces, mainly in respect to a proper interruption management. vii viii Abstract Contents Preface v Abstract vii 1 Introduction 1 1.1Motivation.................................... 1 1.2WearableUserInterfaces............................ 2 1.3 Research Question and Methodology ..................... 3 1.4 Scope and Limitation of the Thesis ...................... 5 1.5ThesisOrganization............................... 6 I Theoretical Framework and Related Work 9 2 Interdisciplinary Foundations 11 2.1 What is a Wearable Computer? ........................ 11 2.2 Research Topics of Wearable Computers ................... 14 2.3 Contributing Research Areas .......................... 19 3 Fundamentals of Perception and Cognition 21 3.1Introduction................................... 21 3.2 The Visual Stimulus .............................. 22 3.2.1 Light - The Stimulus for Vision .................... 23 3.2.2 VisualAcuity.............................. 24 3.2.3 PerceptionofColor........................... 25 3.2.4 Perceiving Objects ........................... 27 3.3 The Auditory Stimulus ............................. 30 3.3.1 The Range of Hearing Sounds ..................... 31 3.3.2 SpeechPerceptionanditsMultimodalNature............ 32 3.4 Attention and Performance Limitations .................... 33 ix x Contents 4 Human-Computer Interaction 37 4.1 HCI and Wearable Computers ......................... 37 4.2 Output Hardware for Wearable Computers .................. 39 4.2.1 WearableVisualDisplays....................... 39 4.2.2 Wearable Audio Displays ........................ 43 4.2.3 HapticWearableOutputDevices................... 47 4.3 Input Hardware for Wearable Computers ................... 48 4.3.1 Implicit Wearable Input ........................ 49 4.3.2 Wearable Text Input .......................... 50 4.3.3 Wearable Command Input ....................... 53 4.4 Interruption Handling ............................. 54 4.4.1 Modeling Interruptions ......................... 55 4.4.2 Interruptions in Mobile and Wearable Computing .......... 56 4.5UserInterfaceEvaluation............................ 57 4.5.1 EvaluationMethods.......................... 59 4.5.2 Evaluation of Mobile Applications ................... 61 5 Context-Awareness and Adaptive User Interfaces 63 5.1 Definitions .................................... 63 5.2 Design and Architecture Principles ...................... 64 5.2.1 AdaptationGoalsandStrategies................... 65 5.2.2 ArchitecturalStructures........................ 66 5.3 Enabling Tool Support Systems ........................ 70 5.4 Summary .................................... 72 II Design and Development of Wearable User Interfaces 73 6 An Approach for Developing Wearable User Interfaces 75 6.1UserInterfaceDesignandDevelopment.................... 75 6.2 Wearable User Interface Development Process ................ 78 6.2.1 Overview................................ 78 6.2.2 Interface Component Process ..................... 80 6.2.3 Wearable Application Development Process ............. 82 6.3Conclusion.................................... 86 Contents xi III Evaluation of Wearable User Interfaces 89 7 The HotWire Apparatus 91 7.1Introduction................................... 91 7.2TheHotWirePrimaryTaskSimulator.................... 92 7.2.1 ConstructionoftheHotWireApparatus............... 93 7.2.2 MonitoringSoftware.......................... 96 7.3 Modeling Primary Tasks with the HotWire .................. 97 7.3.1 ManualTaskCharacteristics...................... 98 7.3.2 Modifiable Parameters ......................... 99 7.3.3 Modeling Examples ...........................100 7.4ApparatusEnhancements...........................102 7.5Conclusion....................................104 8 Interruption Methods for Gesture Interaction 105 8.1Introduction...................................105
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