Situational Impairments and Mobile Microinteractions

The lines between mobile devices – such as PDAs, mobile phones and cameras – have blurred, and are now almost gone. Similarly, the lines between the resulting technology and we, as human beings, are blurring. The challenge for the field of Computer Science, and in particular Human-Computer Interaction, is to ensure that the technology seamlessly fades into the fabric of our lives, rather than requiring ever more of our attention.

One major obstacle preventing technology from becoming a background part, rather than a focus, of our lives, is the usability of the interface while in real-world situations. Many mobile devices borrow from the desktop paradigm, assuming a reasonably quiet, stationary, and controlled environment. Real life, however, isn’t so stable, presenting us with many situations that the interfaces to our current mobile devices handle poorly. Rather than treating life as a problem to be solved, we need to make our technology conform to life. In this talk, I will consider three commonly encountered situations that pose difficulties when we interact with devices, discuss how those difficulties may be studied, and present some of my research into helping mobile devices work better in real-world circumstances.