Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Human–Computer input and output techniques: an analysis of current research and promising applications

  • Published:
Artificial Intelligence Review Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Personal computing applications are constantly increasing their potential power, thanks to steadily growing hardware capabilities and large diffusion of high-quality multimedia output devices. At the same time, mobile communication tools are becoming an integral part of our everyday life, with new advanced functionalities offered at an unrestrainable pace. Although the way we interact with information machines is substantially the same since 20 years—based on keyboard, mouse and window metaphor—other communication modalities are possible, and shortly may become popular as additional interaction methods. Given the paramount importance of the “interface” in present computer applications, no alternative should be ignored, as it could greatly improve the quality of both interaction processes and user cognitive performance. Without pretending to foresee the future, in this paper we provide an overview of the main current technologies which can enable potential novel interfaces, discussing their features, strengths, weaknesses and promising applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Baudisch P, Cutrell E, Robbins D, Czerwinski M, Tandler P, Bederson B, Zierlinger A (2003) Drag-and-Pop and Drag-and-Pick: techniques for accessing remote screen content on touch- and pen-operated systems. In: Proceedings of interact 2003, Zurich, Switzerland

  • Baudisch P, Lee B, Hanna L (2004) Fishnet, a fisheye web browser with search term popouts: a comparative evaluation with overview and linear view. In: Proceedings of AVI 2004 (Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces), Gallipoli (Lecce), Italy

  • Bederson BB, Clamage A, Czerwinski MP, Robertson GG (2004) DateLens: a fisheye calendar interface for PDAs. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 11(1): 90–119. doi:10.1145/972648.972652

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benali-Khoudja M, Hafez M, Alexandre J, Kheddar A (2004) Tactile interfaces: a state-of-the-art survey. In: Proceedings of ISR2004, 35th international symposium on robotics, Paris, France, 23–27 March

  • Bentley F, Tollmar K, Demirdjian D, Koile K, Darrel T (2003) Perceptive presence. IEEE Comput Graph Appl (September/October):26–36 doi:10.1109/MCG.2003.1231175

  • Bérard F (1999) The perceptual window: head motion as a new input stream. In: Proceedings of the 7th IFIP conference on human–computer interaction (INTERACT), pp 238–244

  • Bevacqua E, Mancini M, Pelachaud C (2004) Speaking with emotions. In: Proceedings of AISB convention: motion, emotion and cognition, University of Leeds, UK

  • Bimber O (2004) Combining optical holograms with interactive computer graphics. IEEE Comput 37(1): 85–91

    Google Scholar 

  • Bimber O, Fröhlich B, Schmalstieg D, Encarnação LM (2001) The virtual showcase. IEEE Comput Graph Appl 21(6): 48–55. doi:10.1109/38.963460

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brewster S, Brown LM (2004) Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display. In: Proceedings of the 5th Australasian user interface conference (AUIC2004), Dunedin, New Zealand, January 2004

  • Cassel J, Bickmore T, Billinghurst M, Campbell L, Chang K, Vilhjálmsson H, Yan H (1999) Embodiment in conversational interfaces. In: Proceedings of CHI ‘99, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 15–20 May 1999

  • Cole R, Van Vuurel S, Pellom B, Hacioglu K, Ma J, Movellan J, Schwartz S, Wade-Stein D, Ward W, Yan J (2003) Perceptive animated interfaces: first steps toward a new paradigm for human–computer interaction. Proc IEEE 91(9): 1391–1405. doi:10.1109/JPROC.2003.817143

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Corradini A, Mehta M, Bernsen N, Charfuelan M (2005) Animating an interactive conversational character for an educational game system. In: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on intelligent user interfaces, San Diego, CA, USA

  • del R Millàn J (2003) Adaptive brain interfaces. Commun ACM 46(3): 75–80

    Google Scholar 

  • Doswell JT (2004) Pedagogical embodied conversational agent. In: Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on advanced learning technologies (ICALT’04), 30 August–1 September 2004, pp 774–776

  • Duchowski A (2007) Eye tracking methodology—theory and practice. Springer-Verlag, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Ebrahimi T, Vesin J, Garcia G (2003) Brain–Computer interface in multimedia communication. IEEE Signal Process Mag (January):14–24. doi:10.1109/MSP.2003.1166626

  • Guiard Y, Chapuis O, Du Y, Beaudouin-Lafon M (2006) Allowing camera tilts for document navigation in the standard GUI: a discussion and an experiment. In: Proceedings of AVI 2006 (Working conference on advanced visual interfaces), Venice, Italy, 23–26 May 2006, pp 241–244

  • Hakala T, Lehikoinen J, Aaltonen A (2005) Spatial interactive visualization on small screen. In: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on human–computer interaction with mobile devices & services (MobileHCI’05), Salzburg, Austria, 19–22 September 2005

  • Harless WG, Zier MA, Harless MG, Duncan RC (2003) Virtual conversations: an interface to knowledge. IEEE Comput Graph Appl (September/October):46–52. doi:10.1109/MCG.2003.1231177

  • Ishii H, Ullmer B (1997) Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms. In: Proceedings of CHI 97 (Conference on human factors in computing systems), Atlanta, Georgia USA, ACM, 22–27 March 1997

  • Jacob RJK (1991) The use of eye movements in human–computer interaction techniques: what you look at is what you get. ACM Trans Inf Syst 9(3): 152–169. doi:10.1145/123078.128728

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jain AK, Ross A (2004) Multibiometric systems. Commun ACM 47(1): 34–40. doi:10.1145/962081.962102

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jain AK, Pankanti S, Prabhakar S, Hong L, Ross A, Wayman JL (2004a) Biometrics: a grand challenge. In: Proceedings of the international conference on pattern recognition, 2004, Cambridge, UK

  • Johannsen G (2004) Auditory displays in Human–Machine interfaces. Proc IEEE 92(4)

  • Johnson J, Roberts TL, Verplank W, Smith DC, Irby CH, Beard M, Mackey K (1989) The xerox star: a retrospective. IEEE Computer, September 1999, pp 11– 29.

  • Kaye J (2004) Making scents, aromatic output for HCI. Interaction (January–February):49–61. ACM

  • Lai J (2000) Conversational interfaces. Commun ACM 43(9):24–27. doi:10.1145/348941.348971

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Langley P (1999) User modeling in adaptive interfaces. In: Proceedings of the seventh international conference on user modeling (Springer), Banff, Alberta, 1999

  • Larson A (2003) VoiceXML and the W3C speech interface framework. IEEE Multimedia, October–December 2003, pp 91–93

  • Lee YE, Benbasat I (2003) Interface design for mobile commerce. Commun ACM 46(12): 48–52. doi:10.1145/953460.953487

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levin E, Narayanan S, Pieraccini R, Biatov K, Bocchieri E, Di Fabrizio G, Eckert W, Lee S, Pokrowsky A, Rahim M, Ruscitti P, Walzer M (2000) The AT&T-DARPA communicator mixed-initiative spoken dialog system. In: Proceedings international conference on spoken language processing, Beijing, China, pp 122–125

  • Licklider JCR (1960) Man–Computer symbiosis. IRE Trans Hum Factors Electron HFE- 1: 4–11. doi:10.1109/THFE2.1960.4503259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lieberman H, Selker T (2003) Agents for the user interface. In: Bradshaw J(eds) Handbook of agent technology. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu J, Wong CK, Hui KK (2003) An adaptive user interface based on personalized learning. IEEE Intell Syst (March/April):52–57

  • Lucente M (2000) Conversational interfaces for e-commerce applications. Commun ACM 43(9): 59–61. doi:10.1145/348941.348988

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maglio PP, Campbell CS (2003) Attentive agents. Commun ACM 46(3): 47–51. doi:10.1145/636772.636797

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marcus A, Chen E (2003) Designing the PDA of the future. Interaction (January–February):34–44. ACM

  • McGee K (2004) A touch of the future: contact expressive devices. IEEE Multimedia, January–March 2004, pp 8–11

  • Microsoft Research (1999) The task gallery. http://research.microsoft.com/ui/TaskGallery/

  • Moore MM (2003) Real-world applications for brain–computer interface technology. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng 11(2): 162–165. doi:10.1109/TNSRE.2003.814433

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Myers BA (2001) Using handhelds and PCs together. Commun ACM 44(11): 34–41. doi:10.1145/384150.384159

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Myers BA, Hudson SE, Pausch R (2000) Past, present, and future of user interface software tools. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 7(1): 3–28. doi:10.1145/344949.344959

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nass C, Gong L (2000) Speech interfaces from an evolutionary perspective. Commun ACM 43(9): 36–43. doi:10.1145/348941.348976

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nock HJ, Iyengar G, Neti C (2004) Multimodal processing by finding common cause. Commun ACM 47(1): 51–56. doi:10.1145/962081.962105

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norman D (1999) The invisible computer. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Oviatt S (1999) Ten myths of multimodal interaction. Commun ACM 42(11): 74–81. doi:10.1145/319382.319398

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oviatt S (2003) User-centered modeling and evaluation of multimodal interfaces. Proc IEEE 91(9): 1457–1468. doi:10.1109/JPROC.2003.817127

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paepcke A, Wang O, Patel S, Wang M, Harada S (2004) A cost-effective three-in-one personal digital assistant input control. Int J Hum Comput Stud 60: 717–736. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2003.12.007

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pastel R, Skalsky N (2004) Demonstrating information in simple gestures. In: Proceedings of IUI’04, Madeira, Funchal, Portugal, 13–16 January 2004, pp 360–361

  • Pentland A (2000) Perceptual intelligence. Commun ACM 43(3): 35–44. doi:10.1145/330534.330536

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pentland A (2005) Socially aware computation and communication. Commun ACM 38(3): 63–70

    Google Scholar 

  • Picard RW, Klein J (2002) Computers that recognize and respond to user emotions: theoretical and practical implications. MIT Media Lab Tech Report 538

  • Porta M (2002) Vision-based user interfaces: methods and applications. Int J Hum Comput Stud 57: 27–73. doi:10.1006/ijhc.2002.1012

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quek F, McNeill D, Bryll R, Duncan S, Ma X, Kirbas C, McCullough KE, Ansari R (2002) Multimodal human discourse: gesture and speech. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 9(3): 171–193. doi:10.1145/568513.568514

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raatikainen K, Christensen HB, Nakajima T (2002) Application requirements for middleware for mobile and pervasive systems. Mobile Comput Commun Rev 6(4): 16–24. doi:10.1145/643550.643551

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raffle H, Joachim MW, Tichenor J (2003) Super cilia skin: an interactive membrane. In: Proceedings of CHI 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, 5–10 April 2003

  • Reeves LM, Lai J, Larson JA, Oviatt S, Balaji TS, Buisine S, Collings P, Cohen P, Kraal B, Martin JC, McTear M, Raman T, Stanney KM, Su H, Wang OY (2004) Guidelines for multimodal user interface design. Commun ACM 47(1): 57–59. doi:10.1145/962081.962106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rist T, André E, Muller J (1997) Adding animated presentation agents to the interface. In: Proceedings of the international conference on intelligent user interfaces, Orlando, FL, USA, pp 79–86

  • Robertson G, Horvitz E, Czerwinski M, Baudisch P, Hutchings D, Meyers B, Robbins D, Smith G (2004) Scalable fabric: flexible task management. In: Proceedings of AVI 2004, Gallipoli (Lecce), Italy, 2004

  • Roibás AC, Sala R (2004) Main HCI issues for the design of interfaces for ubiquitous interactive multimedia broadcast. Interaction (March–April):51–53. ACM. doi:10.1145/971258.971274

  • Rosenfeld R, Olsen D, Rudnicky A (2001) Universal speech interfaces. Interaction (November–December):34–44. ACM. doi:10.1145/384076.384085

  • Schiaffino S, Amandi A (2004) User–interface agent interaction: personalization issues. Int J Hum Comput Interact 60: 129–148

    Google Scholar 

  • Sharma R, Zeller M, Pavlovic VI, Huang TS, Lo Z, Chu S, Zhao Y, Phillips JC, Schulten K (2000) Speech/Gesture interface to a visual computing environment. IEEE Comput Graph Appl (March/April):29–37. doi:10.1109/38.824531

  • Shneiderman B (2000) The limits of speech recognition. Commun ACM 43(9): 63–65. doi:10.1145/348941.348990

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shneiderman B, Maes P (1997) Direct manipulation vs. interface agents. Interaction (November–December):43–61. ACM

  • Stanford V (2004) Biosignals offer potential for direct interfaces and health monitoring. Pervasive Computing (IEEE), January–March 2004, pp 99–103

  • Takács B, Kiss B (2003) The virtual human interface: a photorealistic digital human. IEEE Comput Graph Appl (September/October):38–45. doi:10.1109/MCG.2003.1231176

  • Terry M, Mynatt ED (2002) Supporting experimentation with side-views. Commun ACM 45(10): 89–90. doi:10.1145/570907.570942

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas BH, Calder P (2001) Applying cartoon animation techniques to graphical user interfaces. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 8(3): 198–222. doi:10.1145/502907.502909

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turk M (1998) Moving from GUIs to PUIs. Technical Report MSR-TR-98-69 (Microsoft Research)

  • Turk M, Robertson G (2000) Perceptual user interfaces. Commun ACM 43(3): 33–34. doi:10.1145/330534.330535

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ueno M (2005) Animated pedagogical agent based on decision tree for e-Learning. In: Proceedings of the 5th IEEE international conference on advanced learning technologies (ICALT’05), 5–8 July 2005, pp 188–192

  • Van Dam A (2001) User interfaces: disappearing, dissolving, and evolving. Commun ACM 44(3): 50–52. doi:10.1145/365181.365192

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Vertegaal R (2003) Attentive user interfaces. Commun ACM 46(3): 30–33. doi:10.1145/636772.636794

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang Q, Imamiya A, Go K, Mao X (2004) A gaze and speech multimodal interface. In: Proceedings of the 24th IEEE international conference on distributed computing systems workshops (ICDCSW’04), 2004

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dip. di Informatica e Sistemistica, Università di Pavia, via Ferrata 1, 27100, Pavia, Italy

    Marco Porta

Authors
  1. Marco Porta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marco Porta.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Porta, M. Human–Computer input and output techniques: an analysis of current research and promising applications. Artif Intell Rev 28, 197–226 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-009-9098-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-009-9098-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation