Summary14

From EQUIS Lab Wiki

Researchers are becoming aware of the fact that user attention is a limited resource that must be conserved. User interface designers and engineers are beginning to design computing devices that negotiate rather than impose the volume and timing of their communications with the user. Devices are augmented such that they become aware of competing requests for their user’s attention. Information systems are being developed that weigh the importance of the information they supply with the estimated priorities in user activity. Displays are created that track the user’s focus of attention and adjust their renderings to provide peripheral context in support of focused activity.

Computing interfaces that are sensitive to the user’s attention are called Attentive User Interfaces (AUIs);

just like modern traffic systems, AUIs use sensors to determine where users will go next.. their future focus.

this is done with statistical models (of traffic volume in case of traffic system). AUIs also measure and model focus priorities of their users attention. this allows them to structure their communication such that the limited resource of user attention is optimally allocated across the users tasks

AUIs employ extra channels of input to measure overt characteristics of user attention such as user presence, proximity, orientation, speech ativity or gaze

based on these inputs AUIS can make assumptions about user activities.. by statistically modeling attention and other interactive behaviour, auis may establish the urgency and relevance of info or actions in the context of the current activity

like a conversation, an AUI can gracefully negotiate the amount of attention they receive from the user using a process similar to turn taking behavior in conversations.

Instead of immediately taking the foreground an AUI can progressively signal their requests for attention.

this can be done initially through a channel peripheral to the users activity - the AUI can then wait for acknowledgement before taking the foreground

Finally, AUIs can also augment the user’s capacity for attention. Analogous to the Cocktail Party Effect, which allows people to focus on one among several speakers during noisy meetings, AUIs can enhance information presented in areas where users focus their attention, while they attenuate peripheral detail.

-other paradigms