Informal User Interfaces for Natural Human-Computer Interaction

        James Landay, Computer Science Division, UCB

Computers have found their greatest success in applications where they
have replaced humans in tasks at which humans are poor. As computers
grow more powerful, less expensive, and more ubiquitous, we begin to
expect them to assist us in tasks that humans do well. Unfortunately,
the historical strengths of computers have led to a design bias
towards support of precise computation, and away from the more human
properties of ambiguity, creativity, and communication. Consequently,
user interfaces are designed to facilitate structured data input
rather than natural human communication, which consists of the
imprecise modes of speaking, writing, gesturing, and sketching. We use
the term informal user interfaces to describe user interfaces designed
to support natural, ambiguous forms of human-computer interaction.

The primary tenet of our work in informal user interfaces is to bend
computers to people's mode of interaction, not the other way
around. For some domains it is clear that the formal approach imposed
by conventional user interfaces in fact presents an obstacle to
effective task performance. One such domain that we have investigated
is user interface design itself. In this talk we will describe a
promising approach to solving this problem and its embodiment in SILK,
a tool we have developed for user interface design. We also describe
directions for future work in informal user interfaces in domains as
varied as presentations and collaborative note taking.