Generating remote control interfaces for complex appliances

  • Authors:
  • Jeffrey Nichols;Brad A. Myers;Michael Higgins;Joseph Hughes;Thomas K. Harris;Roni Rosenfeld;Mathilde Pignol

  • Affiliations:
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;MAYA Design, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA;MAYA Design, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA;Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 15th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
  • Year:
  • 2002

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

The personal universal controller (PUC) is an approach for improving the interfaces to complex appliances by introducing an intermediary graphical or speech interface. A PUC engages in two-way communication with everyday appliances, first downloading a specification of the appliance's functions, and then automatically creating an interface for controlling that appliance. The specification of each appliance includes a high-level description of every function, a hierarchical grouping of those functions, and dependency information, which relates the availability of each function to the appliance's state. Dependency information makes it easier for designers to create specifications and helps the automatic interface generators produce a higher quality result. We describe the architecture that supports the PUC, and the interface generators that use our specification language to build high-quality graphical and speech interfaces.