Mobile Devices for Control
Brad Myers Human Computer
Interaction Institute, CMU
May 9, 2003
1:30PM
NE43-941
Abstract
With today's wireless technologies, such as BlueTooth and IEEE 802.11,
connecting handheld computers and conventional computers together are
becoming no longer an occasional event for synchronization. Instead,
the devices are frequently in close, interactive communication. Many
environments, such as offices, meeting rooms and classrooms, already
contain computers, and the smart homes of the future will have
ubiquitous embedded computation. Household and office appliances will
soon have wireless communication abilities. When the user enters one
of these environments carrying a handheld or wearable computer, how
will that computer interact with the environment? The Pebbles project
is exploring the many ways that small handheld Personal Digital
Assistants (PDAs) such as PalmOS devices or Pocket PC / Windows CE
devices can serve as a useful adjunct to the "fixed" computers in
those situations. For meetings, our applications allow the presenter
to use a PDA to have better control of presentations, and allow the
audience to actively participate with their own PDAs. For the office,
other Pebbles applications allow the PDA to be used as an extra input
and output device. For the home, we are exploring the use of the PDA
as a customizable, intelligent "personal universal controller" (PUC)
for appliances. For classrooms, we are investigating how the students'
handhelds can enhance testing and notetaking when they are connected
to the instructor's PC. For the disabled, we are investigating how
PDAs can serve as assistive devices for access to computers and
appliances. This talk will provide an overview of our Pebbles project,
including a live demonstration of our systems (available for download
from our web site) and a discussion of future plans.
For more information, see
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pebbles/.
Bio
Brad Myers is a Senior Research Scientist in the Human-Computer
Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie
Mellon University. He is the author or editor of over 230
publications, including three books, and he is on the editorial board
of five journals. He has consulted for over 40 companies on user
interface design and implementation. Myers received a PhD in computer
science at the University of Toronto where he developed the Peridot
UIMS. He received the MS and BSc degrees from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology during which time he was a research intern at
Xerox PARC. From 1980 until 1983, he worked at PERQ Systems
Corporation. His research interests include user interfaces, handheld
computers, programming languages for kids, User Interface Development
Systems, Programming by Example, Visual Programming, interaction
techniques, window management, and programming environments. He
belongs to SIGCHI, ACM, IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, and Computer
Professonals for Social Responsibility.