Its now that wonderful time in my PhD life when I have finished writing my thesis, it has been passed on to the committee, and I are eagerly awaiting my defense! After many years of very hard work and some good planning on our part, my partner in crime (and life!!), Fraser, and I will receive our PhD degrees in November 2014! My thesis is a nice wrap up of all of the pen-based interaction that I have been publishing over the last year. I must say, I am super proud of myself. Fraser’s thesis is on gesture learning and I am super jealous that he gets to talk about LEGO and Disney’s Haunted Mansion in his dissertation!
We just couldn’t resist not getting Mickey Graduate Ears!
Rounding out today’s news is another Graphics Interface 2014 publication that I have forthcoming. This publication, “The Pen Is Mightier: Understanding Stylus Behaviour While Inking on Tablets” reports on a user study that was conducted at Microsoft Research during my extended internship. The study investigated the differences in hand posture, hand movements, writing size, and user preferences while participants were performing note-taking and sketching tasks using traditional pen and paper, a digital tablet with a passive stylus, and a digital tablet. Dr. Anoop Gutpa served as my Microsoft mentor during the project and Fraser and Walter assisted me with the analysis and discussion sections of the work. Once the full paper is available, I will provide a link to it.
Abstract: Although pens and paper are pervasive in the analog world, their digital counterparts, styli and tablets, have yet to achieve the same adoption and frequency of use. To date, little research has identified why inking experiences differ so greatly between analog and digital media or quantified the varied experiences that exist with stylus-enabled tablets. By observing quantitative and behavioural data in addition to querying preferential opinions, the experimentation reaffirmed the significance of accuracy, latency, and unintended touch, whilst uncovering the importance of friction, aesthetics, and stroke beautification to users. The observed participant behaviour and recommended tangible goals should enhance the development and evaluation of future systems.
Today is a big day in the world of Michelle because I have lots of news to share! In addition to the CHI 2014 publication on the High Performance Stylus System, I am happy to report that I also have a follow-up paper that will be presented a Graphics Interface 2014 in Montreal entitled, “How Low Should We Go? Understanding the Perception of Latency While Inking”! (Yaaah again for no cell phone roaming fees to attend the conference!) As the paper is forthcoming, I can’t release all of the details but I can share the abstract and a short video that we shot. Once the full paper is available, I will provide a link to it.
Abstract: Recent advances in hardware have enabled researchers to study the perception of latency. Thus far, latency research has utilized simple touch and stylus-based tasks that do not represent inking activities found in the real world. In this work, we report on two studies that utilized writing and sketching tasks to understand the limits of human perception. Our studies revealed that latency perception while inking is worse (~50 milliseconds) than perception while performing non-inking tasks reported previously (~2-7 milliseconds). We also determined that latency perception is not based on the distance from the stylus’ nib to the ink, but rather on the presence of a visual referent such as the hand or stylus. The prior and current work has informed the Latency Perception Model, a framework upon which latency knowledge and the underlying mechanisms of perception can be understood and further explored. Although every accepted paper is cause for celebration, I am especially happy that this paper was accepted because the proposed Latency Perception Model is a nice summary of all the latency work that has been done by myself and others thus far. Here is the YouTube video summarizing our work:
Woo hoo! It’s finally time that I can talk about some of the awesome work that I did at Microsoft Research while I was on my extended internship! One of my forthcoming papers, entitled “In the Blink of an Eye: Investigating Latency Perception during Stylus Interaction” is going to appear in the proceedings of CHI 2014. The conference will take place at the end of April in Toronto (yippeee no cell phone roaming fees!) but here is sneak preview of the abstract and the video we shot for the project. The follow-up to this work will be published at Graphics Interface 2014, and can be seen here.
The HPSS was built by Albert Ng and Paul Dietz, who collaborated previously on the High Performance Touch System that you can see here on YouTube. The psychophysical just-noticeable difference studies were incepted, conducted, and analyzed by me! Anoop Gupta and my supervisor Walter acted as mentors on the project.
Abstract: While pen computing has become increasingly more popular, device responsiveness, or latency, still plagues such interaction. Although there have been advances in digitizer technology over the last few years, commercial end-to-end latencies are unfortunately similar to those found with touchscreens, i.e., 65 – 120 milliseconds. We report on a prototype stylus-enabled device, the High Performance Stylus System (HPSS), designed to display latencies as low as one millisecond while users ink or perform dragging tasks. To understand the role of latency while inking with a stylus, psychophysical just-noticeable difference experiments were conducted using the HPSS. While participants performed dragging and scribbling tasks, very low levels of latency could be discriminated, i.e., ~1 versus 2 milliseconds while dragging and ~7 versus 40 milliseconds while scribbling. The HPSS and our experimentation have provided further motivation for the implementation of latency saving measures in pen-based hardware and software systems.
It’s been a long, awesome summer but I am happy to get back in the research groove. Ever since I completed my internship at Autodesk Research, I have been trying to narrow down the focus of my PhD research (because improving client enjoyment and motivation is still a huge area!!). After lots of reading, contemplating, and staring at the ceiling, I began to realize I was really interested in the basics of human movement: how people were moving their arms and hands on our multi-touch tabletop, why they were moving, why they weren’t moving, and how some movements were very similar from activity to activity, while others were completely different.
These questions lead me towards thinking about the core principles behind horizontal-based gestures, multi-finger interaction, and multi-touch interfaces, as well as motor learning, skill acquisition, and skill transfer. With all these great questions swirling around in my head, I have decided to switch gears and focus my forthcoming research on a number of the unanswered questions that exist with multi-touch gestures and look at them through a motor learning-inspired magnifying glass. Until next time!
