Leveraging Human Capabilities

ABSTRACT:
Computer hardware performance has improved at a rapid rate for some time (Moore's Law), and there is reason to believe this trend will continue for some time to come. Current computer performance enables significant change in the user interface, yet the basic graphical user interface has not changed much since its invention in the mid-1970s. Current interfaces often fail to take advantage of what we know about human cognitive, perceptual, motor, and language capabilities. Future user interfaces will eliminate this impedance mismatch, and leverage natural human capabilities to simplify complex information management tasks. Examples from Information Perceptualization, 3D User Interfaces, Multimodal Input, and Conversational Interfaces suggest how we might begin to leverage these human capabilities to enrich the user experience in the 21^st century.

SPEAKER BIO:
George Robertson is a Senior Researcher and Manager of the User Interface Research group at Microsoft Research. Before coming to Microsoft, he was a Principal Scientist at Xerox PARC, working primarily on 3D interactive animation interfaces for intelligent information access applications. He was the architect of the Information Visualizer. He has also been a Senior Scientist at Thinking Machines, a Senior Scientist at Bolt Beranek and Newman, and a faculty member of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University. In the past, he has made significant contributions to machine learning, multimedia message systems, hypertext systems, operating systems, and programming languages.

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