The design of mobile navigation systems adapting to limited resources will be an important future challenge. Since typically several different means of transportation have to be combined in order to reach a destination, the user interface of such a system has to adapt to the user's changing situation. This applies especially to the alternating use of different technologies to detect the user's position, which should be as seamless as possible. This article presents a hybrid navigation system that relies on different technologies to determine the user's location and that adapts the presentation of route directions to the limited technical resources of the output device and the limited cognitive resources of the user.

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A resource-adaptive mobile navigation system

This low-cost indoor navigation system runs on off-the-shelf camera phones. More than 2,000 users at four different large-scale events have already used it. The system uses built-in cameras to determine user location in real time by detecting unobtrusive fiduciary markers. The required infrastructure is limited to paper markers and static digital maps, and common devices are used, facilitating quick deployment in new environments. The authors have studied the application quantitatively in a controlled environment and qualitatively during deployment at four large international events. According to test users, marker-based navigation is easier to use than conventional mobile digital maps. Moreover, the users' location awareness in navigation tasks improved. Experiences drawn from questionnaires, usage log data, and user interviews further highlight the benefits of this approach.

Indoor Positioning and Navigation with Camera Phones

In recent years, there has been significant growth in the use of patient-specific models to predict the effects of neuromodulation therapies such as deep brain stimulation (DBS). However, translating these models from a research environment to the everyday clinical workflow has been a challenge, primarily due to the complexity of the models and the expertise required in specialized visualization software. In this paper, we deploy the interactive visualization system ImageVis3D Mobile, which has been designed for mobile computing devices such as the iPhone or iPad, in an evaluation environment to visualize models of Parkinson's disease patients who received DBS therapy. Selection of DBS settings is a significant clinical challenge that requires repeated revisions to achieve optimal therapeutic response, and is often performed without any visual representation of the stimulation system in the patient. We used ImageVis3D Mobile to provide models to movement disorders clinicians and asked them to use the software to determine: 1) which of the four DBS electrode contacts they would select for therapy; and 2) what stimulation settings they would choose. We compared the stimulation protocol chosen from the software versus the stimulation protocol that was chosen via clinical practice (independent of the study). Lastly, we compared the amount of time required to reach these settings using the software versus the time required through standard practice. We found that the stimulation settings chosen using ImageVis3D Mobile were similar to those used in standard of care, but were selected in drastically less time. We show how our visualization system, available directly at the point of care on a device familiar to the clinician, can be used to guide clinical decision making for selection of DBS settings. In our view, the positive impact of the system could also translate to areas other than DBS.

Evaluation of Interactive Visualization on Mobile Computing Platforms for Selection of Deep Brain Stimulation Parameters

EMBASSI multimodal assistance for infotainment and service infrastructures

EMBASSI is a joint research project with 19 partners from industry and academia. Its focus is the development new paradigms and architectures for the intuitive interaction with technical infrastructures of the everyday life, such as home entertainment and control, public terminals, and car infotainment systems. As a so-called focus project, EMBASSI is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and addresses innovative methods of man-machine interaction, where "machine" explicitly refers to technical systems consisting of a variety of distributed, networked devices.EMBASSI aims at enhancing the interaction with these infrastructures by providing intelligent assistance, multimodal interaction, and anthropomorphic user interfaces within a unified framework. Technical development in EMBASSI is based on a user centered approach, with accompanying psychological and ergonomics research.A primary objective of the project is to establish an "EMBASSI layer" that extends recently developed networking standards like HAVi, UPnP, or Konnex towards user-centered, goal-based interaction by merging experiences from knowledge based AI systems with those coming from device oriented command and control architectures. This layer will enable the unification of interaction paradigms and will assist the user by enabling "natural" or "intuitive" commands instead of forcing the user to think in terms of device functions.

EMBASSI: multimodal assistance for universal access to infotainment and service infrastructures

As computers are becoming more and more ubiquitous, moving from the desktop into the infrastructure of our everyday life, they begin to influence the way we interact with this environment - the (physical) entities that we operate upon in order to achieve our daily goals. The most important aspect of future human-computer interaction therefore is the way, computers support us in efficiently managing our personal environment. This might be called the ecological level of user-interface design. The paper discusses the fundamental challenges and solution concepts for building personal digital assistants that support users in interacting with the real world, based on the model of situation-aware mobile assistance.

Beyond the Desktop: Natural Interaction and Intelligent Assistance for the Everyday Life

Relatively cheap and widely available wireless data communication services are available to the mass-market. Within the coverage of the cellular network used, the vision of information access for ‘everyone, anytime, anywhere’ has become reality. A Global Information Visualization environment can be imagined where the vision of ‘All information at your fingertip’ is reality. In this environment, every information, data, or tool available on any computer connected to the global network is directly accessible to the user.

Mobile Visualization: Challenges and Solution Concepts

Weltweit wird an der Entwicklung von Technologien für zukünftige interaktive Systeme gearbeitet, die neue Möglichkeiten bieten, Usability-Probleme zu adressieren. In diesem Beitrag werden einige aktuelle Forschungsansätze des Fraunhofer-Instituts für Graphische Datenverarbeitung zu kontinuierlichen und nichtsymbolischen Interaktionsparadigmen vorgestellt und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Usability-Forschung diskutiert. An konkreten Projekten werden neue Herausforderungen an die Usability-Forschung dargestellt, neuartige Lösungen für Usability-Probleme erläutert und neue Werkzeuge und Frameworks für die Unterstützung des Usability Engineerings vorgestellt.

Die Zukunft interaktiver Systeme: Herausforderungen an die Usability-Forschung (The Future of Interactive Systems: Challenges to the Usability Research)

Inexpensive mobile data communication - based, e.g., on cellular phone networks - enables the access to data and services for "everyone, anytime, anywhere". At the same time, global information systems begin to emerge, which provide a unified access to multimedia data and services. However, the mobile access to these information repositories is being hampered by the technical constraints of the underlying hardware, especially with respect to interactive multimedia applications. Central challenges are low bandwidth in comparison to local-area networks, resource constraints of mobile devices, and massive changes in the information stock. Based on an integrative view of systems and data models for mobile information visualization, this paper discusses solution strategies which address these challenges. Furthermore, we discuss prototype applications being developed at our institute ("HyperFunk", "Active Multimedia Mail") and the basic research project "MOVI".

Thomas Kirste

Papers

Beyond the Desktop: Natural Interaction and Intelligent Assistance for the Everyday Life

Mobile Visualization: Challenges and Solution Concepts

Die Zukunft interaktiver Systeme: Herausforderungen an die Usability-Forschung (The Future of Interactive Systems: Challenges to the Usability Research)

Visualisierung und Interaktion im Zeitalter des Mobile Computing