We are poised at the threshold of an information rich world with devices and services able to deliver that information to nearly anyone, at any place, and at any time. Humans have evolved social mechanisms for smoothly and flexibly managing interpersonal communications; however, current computational and communications devices are, almost without exception, utterly unaware of the social and attentional state of the user. They know little or nothing of the personal, social, and task situations in which they are used, and they do little or nothing to account for, and minimize, the human costs they induce. In this project, the PI and his team will explore situationally appropriate interfaces that retrieve, generate, and deliver information in a manner that is sensitive to the situation of the user. These interfaces will allow for communication and information systems that maneuver, rather than blunder, through the social world. To accomplish this ambitious goal, the team will pursue a three-part research plan. First, they will use behavioral theory and research to model social mechanisms for managing interpersonal communications. The comparatively unexploited research we will draw on examines the affordances of situations and consistent patterns of human nonverbal social behavior within situations. Second, they will extract key situational and user behavior data from these models via input from new sensing technologies, using noninvasive (e.g., vision-based) sensing technology to provide information about situations and users. Third, leveraging knowledge from sensory, perceptual, and cognitive psychology, as well as from the fields of visual and interaction design, the team will create displays and interaction designs that are far more situationally appropriate than today's interfaces. To address the substantial challenges that this breadth of work presents, the PI has assembled a strong multidisciplinary team that brings expertise from computer science, social, sensory, perceptual, and cognitive psychology, and the field of design.
