Human Bandwidth
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We usually talk about bandwidth while we’re downloading a movie from the Internet or playing an online game. But what’s the actual required bandwidth for efficient communication between an human and a computer? This was a short talk I gave at Opensoft Barcamp 2010.
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Human Bandwidth
- 1. Human Bandwidth © Copyright 2010 Pedro Alves - Opensoft Barcamp 2010
- 2. 212 wpmMrs. Barbara Blackburn
- 4. talking face to face (two friends) Words Sentences Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 5. talking face to face (two strangers) Words Sentences Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 6. talking face to face with skype Words Sentences Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 7. talking on the phone Words Sentences Voice intonation (↓) Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 8. Sending a handwritten letter Words Sentences Calligraphy / Drawings Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 9. Sending a typewritten letter Words Sentences Calligraphy / Drawings Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around)
- 10. Filling a contact form Words Sentences Calligraphy / Drawings Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 11. Filling a checklist Words Sentences Calligraphy / Drawings Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 12. Words Sentences Calligraphy / Drawings Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history http://www.flickr.com/photos/33367398@N00/2999591242/
- 13. How do computers deal with limited bandwidth? Force the user to provide more information Extra user effort User becomes unhappy
- 14. Amazon Words Sentences Emotion Cues Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 15. Facebook Words Sentences Emotion Cues Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 16. Wii/Kinect Words Sentences Emotion Cues Voice intonation Facial expression Body expression General look/style Environment (around) Personal history
- 17. http://www.flickr.com/photos/emzii/3554047913/ I'm not completely blind, I just kind of see things through a veil that i can't remove
- 18. We need more
- 19. We need less
- 20. We need less effort
- 21. 3-axis accelerometerdigital compassproximity sensormicrophonedual cameragpsbluetoothin the future:polution/air quality sensorGSR “emotion sensor”RFID/NFC
- 22. Jogging
- 26. - detects the user is hungry (or she’s not but should eat anyway)- looks up nearby restaurant based on the user interests- make a reservation- tell her
- 27. “The other night, however, a very amazing thing happened. I downloaded an app called Color ID. It uses the iPhone's camera, and speaks names of colors....”Austin Seraphin
Editor's Notes
- Mrs Barbara Blackburn holds the world record of typing speed. The channel between her and the typewriter has a large bandwidth.
- The bandwidth of the channel between two friends talking face to face is enormous. Not only are a lot of words and sentences being transmited but also their expressions, their mood, the way they are dressed and the surrounding environment. All these factors contribute to a better and more efficient communication.
- Since they are strangers, they loose one very important piece of information: their personal history. When you don’t know how someone behaved in the past, you are not able to adapt the communication, decreasing eficiency.
- As you further separate the two conversation endpoints, you continue loosing valuable information. The channel bandwidth is decreasing fast.
- When you reach the dominant model of interaction on Internet applications (forms), you are already severely constrained on the ammount of information you can give. You have a ridiculously small bandwidth to communicate with the computer.
- When you compare human-human interaction with human-computer interaction, it feels like you are blind, mute and deaf.
- There is hope . Things have been slowly changing. Amazon uses your personal history (items you bought in the past) and the emotion cues (ratings) of thousands of reviewers to improve communication. Notice that they don’t force you to fill a form in order to give you insightful recommendations.
- In Facebook you just write what comes to your mind. You have full sentences that say a lot about you. And you have “likes”, a structured form of emotion.
- Reading your body expression is now on the realm of games, but soon will be adopted in other applications, increasing immensely the bandwidth between human and machine.
- So we are not completely blind after all, when it comes to human-computer interaction. But there’s still a long way to go.
- Typically, when you have a low bandwidth channel, you are forced to send lots of messages to achieve your goal. That will result in more effort (e.g., asking the user for very detailed information, many times).We need more data being transmited (more bandwidth) with less user effort.
- Sensors are finally becoming ubiquituous, thanks to the proliferation of smart phones. This can be game-changing: the bandwidth can become much larger, as the environment around the human is also being transmited to the machine.
- We can see that already – we don’t need the effort of filling a spreadsheet everyday with our jogging times. But, some things are still missing: environment (was it raining, windy?)
- The ammount of stress in a city is a powerful source of information to help computers make good decisions.
- No need to search for touristic local information. With augmented reality, information comes to us.
- ContextContacts - Reduce unwanted interruptions with the cellphone, by providing awareness about the current state of our friends (busy, talking, muted phone, etc.)
- A possible future scenario
- Ironically, there are cases where the computer actually helps the human improve his own bandwidth with the world.
- Feel free to follow me on twitter @inospito