Review of Recent Research: Citrine Smart Clipboard, WhyLine Interrogative Debugging, EdgeWrite Text Entry, and Pebbles PocketPC Software

August 4, 2004
Brad A. Myers | Carnegie Mellon University

My research group has made significant progress in many areas of human-computer interaction that will be of interest to Microsoft. This talk will quickly summarize our research over the last year in four areas:

Citrine is a system that extends the widespread copy-and-paste interaction technique with intelligent transformations, making it possible to copy-and-paste in more situations. Citrine currently includes parsers that recognize contact information, calendar appointments and bibliographic citations. It works with Internet Explorer, Outlook, Excel, Palm Desktop, EndNote and virtually all other applications. See: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~citrine/

The Whyline is a novel debugging interface that adds a “Why” button to the programming environment so a beginner or expert programmer can ask questions about their program’s failure in terms of their program’s output. In user tests with beginner-programmers, the Whyline reduced debugging time by nearly a factor of 8, and helped users get 40% further through their task. See: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~NatProg/marm-whyline.html

EdgeWrite is a new text input technique where the user’s motion is restricted to be along the edges and across the diagonals of a square. Studies have found that it provides high accuracy and stability of motion. Recent work has investigated the use of Edgewrite by people with motor impairments, for example using a power wheelchair’s built-in joystick. See: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~edgewrite/

The Pebbles project is exploring how handheld devices, such as Pocket PCs and Smartphones, can be used when they are communicating with a “regular” personal computer, with other handhelds, and with appliances such as telephones, radios, microwave ovens, automobiles, and factory equipment. See: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~pebbles/

Speaker Details

Brad A. Myers is a Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is the principal investigator for various research projects including: the Pebbles Hand-Held Computer Project, Natural Programming, User Interface Software, and Demonstrational Interfaces. He is the author or editor of over 250 publications, including the books “Creating User Interfaces by Demonstration” and “Languages for Developing User Interfaces,” and he is on the editorial board of five journals. He has been a consultant on user interface design and implementation to over 50 companies, and regularly teaches courses on user interface design and software. Myers received a PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto where he developed the Peridot UIMS. He received the MS and BSc degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during which time he was a research intern at Xerox PARC. From 1980 until 1983, he worked at PERQ Systems Corporation. In 2004, he was elected to the CHI Academy, an honor bestowed on the principal leaders of the field, whose efforts have shaped the discipline and led the research in human-computer interaction. His research interests include user interface development systems, user interfaces, hand-held computers, programming by example, programming languages for kids, visual programming, interaction techniques, window management, and programming environments. He belongs to SIGCHI, ACM, IEEE Computer Society, IEEE, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam