Continuous interaction and human control

Doherty G., Massink M.

Interaction  Software/program verification 

Modern information technology is becoming both increasingly ubiquitous and increasingly varied in the possible ways it can interact with the user. With many emerging technologies, interaction with the user is no longer based exclusively on discrete interactions, which are the underlying model for many traditional approaches in HCI (for example, Norman's seven stage model (Norman, 1998). Rather, modem interaction techniques develop towards interfaces where the user is in constant interaction with the computing system, communicating with it by means of gestures, speech and animation as well as discrete communication such as selection by pressing buttons or typing via a keyboard. This development requires new interface design approaches that allow for the analysis of the discrete as well as the continuous aspects of the interface, and that support reasoning about real-time issues. We examine how classical manual control theory can be applied in this area. Conversely, in the area of human control, a shift has occurred away from pure manual control scenarios to more supervisory and mixed control tasks. We believe these two trends have established much common ground between the areas of interactive· systems and human control, and examine some on-going research in this area.

Source: XVIII European Annual Conference on Human Decision Making and Manual Control, pp. 80–96, Loughborough, October 25-27 1999