Informal Tools For Designing Anywhere, Anytime, Anydevice User Interfaces

James A. Landay, UC Berkeley

Stevenson Hall 1300
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

We are now entering the era of pervasive computing, an era where people will access information and services anywhere, anytime, and from a wide variety of devices. The challenge for researchers and practitioners is how to support the design of user interfaces that will empower people to engage in these interactions easily and efficiently. Our work has been in creating design tools that support the best practices of user-centered design. Such practices include the informal techniques used during the early stages of design, such as sketching and "faking" interactions using Wizard of Oz techniques to test early designs. In this talk we will argue that tools with informal user interfaces best support these practices. Informal user interfaces support natural human input, such as speech and writing, while minimizing recognition and transformation of the input. These interfaces that document, rather than transform, better support a designer's flow state. Unrecognized input embraces nuanced expression and suggests a malleability of form that is critical for activities such as early-stage design. We will illustrate this by examining informal tools wehave created for designing information architectures and web sites, speech-based userinterfaces, and anytime, anywhere user interfaces that take advantage of a variety of modes of input and output on a range of devices.