CHI Preview Talks

"Home Networking and HCI: What Hath God Wrought?"
Erika Shehan, W. Keith Edwards, College of Computing

"Presence and Engagement in an Interactive Drama"
Steven Dow, Manish Mehtama, Ellie Harmon, Blair MacIntyre, College of Computing
Michael Mateas, UC Santa Cruz

"Revisiting and Validating a Model of Two-Thumb Text Entry"
Edward Clarkson, Kent Lyons, J. Clawson, Thad Starner, College of Computing

12:00 Noon on Thursday, April 5, 2007
TSRB 132

For much of the industrialized world, network connectivity in the home is commonplace. However, despite the large number of networked homes, even the most technically savvy people can have difficulties with home network installation and maintenance. We contend that these problems will not disappear over time as the networking industry matures, but rather are due to structural usability flaws inherent in the design of existing network infrastructure, devices, and protocols. The HCI community can offer a unique perspective to overcoming the challenges associated with home networking. This paper discusses why home networking is difficult, based on analysis of historical, social, and technical factors. It explores how the designs of existing home networking technologies have implications for usability, and examines a range of models for addressing these usability challenges. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these models may impact future research efforts in both HCI and networking.

In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative, empirical study exploring the impact of immersive technologies on presence and engagement, using the interactive drama Façade as the object of study. In this drama, players are situated in a married couple's apartment, and interact primarily through conversation with the characters and manipulation of objects in the space. We present participants' experiences across three different versions of Façade-augmented reality (AR) and two desktop computing based implementations, one where players communicate using speech and the other using typed keyboard input. Through interviews and observations of players, we find that immersive AR can create an increased sense of presence, confirming generally held expectations. However, we demonstrate that increased presence does not necessarily lead to more engagement. Rather, mediation may be necessary for some players to fully engage with certain interactive media experiences.

Researchers at York University in Canada developed--but did not validated--a Fitts' Law-based performance model of expert two-thumb text entry on mini-QWERTY keyboards. Here we present a validation, using data from our previous longitudinal study of mini-QWERTY keyboard performance, and update the model to account for discrepancies between observed and predicted inter-key transition times.