China HCI seminar series in Beijing - First session

China HCI Seminar Series
October 26, 2009

This is what I wrote from the first session in the China HCI Seminar Series which kicked off last night. This seminar series is meant to foster research and collaboration among HCI researchers in the Chinese community as well as abroad. It was held at the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. There was lots of people for the first session, so the turn out was really great like a large lecture hall! There were two talks after introduction by the organizers and distinguished Chinese HCI researchers.








Prof. James Landay, University of Washington, Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research Asia

Jonathan Grudin: A Moving Target: The Evolution of HCI

Keynote Speech

HCI started with Human Factors and Ergonomics with operation and data entry from 1905 to 1945, and then came the invention of general-purpose computers. HCI was one of five major IS research streams since 1967 (Banker and Kaufmann). Then there was HCI in Information Systems for managerial use. Finally Computer-Human Interaction happened in the 1980s with the beginning of the CHI conference and the establishment of SIGCHI. There was a focus shift from non-discretionary use to discretionary use. The Computer-Human Interaction stream started from the work of computer-engineer interaction and the work done at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). The actual goal behind human-computer interaction actually started with the work of Grace Hopper.

According to Jonathan, there is a shifting focus of interface development from the large hardware mainframes, to the PCs, and now in groups and mobile devices where it is used collaboratively. The graphical user interface (GUI) changed the field of human-computer interaction in 1985 with the Apple Mac computer. Jonathan showed a curve of Moore’s Law showing how as you move the number of years, there is a longer tail on the curve. The next big impact was in 1995 where there was unanticipated changes in audio, video and graphics. Now, if we continue the curve, what is the next big bomb and it is predicted that it will happen in 2015. Design started coming into HCI since 1995, but we have been neglecting design for a decade or so. There is now new research trend into emotional design.


History and evolution of HCI


Interface development

The amount of information will dramatically increase exponentially and increasingly significant focus in HCI. H.G. Wells made a quote which sounds very much related to what the vision of human-driven Web 2.0 systems is, and this was in 1905! There is now the emergence of information schools. James Martin from 1973 talked about the era of information scarcity and according to Jonathan, we are still in the age of information scarcity. Now, there is a merging of the physical and virtual world. We can learn something from the kids domain like WebKinz where kids can buy a stuffed toy, enter the code, and then can enter the virtual world where they have to feed their toy and can share with other kids’ toys. He says why this can’t be the same in the adult world like buying a car?



Desney Tan: Creating Novel Human-Computer Interaction with Physiological Sensing
Computational User Experiences Group, Microsoft Research
Desney's web site


Following Jonathan’s footsteps, the next big thing in the evolution of computing paradigms is natural user interfaces. Mind reading devices are now hitting the consumer market, and is now becoming a science. At Microsoft Research, Desney and his team is looking into classifying brain activity tasks and uncontrolled game tasks with greater than 80% accuracy. The goal is to have only a few sensors as possible with high accuracy. They can use the brain sensors to accurately classify images based on brain activity using EEG. Another goal is to take science fiction like Minority Report as reality, and use detection of hand gesture recognition. At Microsoft Research, there is Project Natal which is controller free interaction which will be shipped with Microsoft XBox. In order to make this reality, they use EMG armbands to use muscle stimulation in order to detect gestures. You can sense gestures on a hard surface like a table top using Microsoft Surface.

Games are a very good test of the research because they require accurate classification and fast classification. Their group created a test application called Air Guitar Hero that uses hand gestures to pretend playing the guitar. A third research theme is mouth gesture interactions for example using tongues that can be used with paralyzed people who cannot use their hands or arms. Desneyäs group created a device to be placed on the tongue with electrodes in order to sense the tongue with a micro+controller. The idea is that some children wear retainers when they are young but a reluctant to use them because they are not nice to have and make them look ugly. But if they were cool by using sensors to make them technologically advanced to use, would help adoption of them. An example is using your tongue to control a Tetris game. All the technology is now embedded in the tongue retainer. So what are some applications of tongue gesture interaction? According to Desney, we can use tongue gestures to control mobile devices like for example building a music player within your mouth. Another application is in medical sensing for salivary analysis and food analysis.

The last project is Bionic Contact Lenses where technology is embedded in the contact lens. An application could be to project information into the eye, for example, remembering who a particular person is by looking at that person. Another application is medical sensing such as glucose sensing with bionic contacts.

In closing, Desney is talking about the next evolution of HCI that will help bring computing into the real world.



At the end, there was some questions addressed to Desney and Jonathan.



All in all, a great start to what looks to be a great lecture series on HCI in Beijing, something that I miss from my alma mater at University of Toronto.