HCC: Small: Understanding, Sensing, and Accommodating Situational Impairments in Mobile Computing

“计算机用户”不再仅仅被认为是在一个一贯舒适的工作环境中坐在办公桌前的人。今天，典型的电脑用户现在拿着一个比他或她的手还小的移动设备，在户外，在阳光下或在雨中，甚至可能在运动中，比如走路或骑马。然而，移动设备并没有深刻的意识到它们正在使用的环境，或者这些环境将如何影响用户的行动能力。解决这一挑战是该项目的中心思想。方法是通过科学的手段更好地理解，并通过巧妙的感知和设计，更好地适应影响我们这个时代新典型的计算机用户，即移动用户的“情境障碍”。尽管过去已经注意到情境障碍，但很少有研究关注如何感知损害效应以及如何应对它们。传感器、推理和用户界面方面的创新有可能在存在情境障碍的情况下改善移动交互，表明可访问性“适合每个人”。这项工作的智力价值包括：(a)对人类表现的一些情境损害因素进行科学研究；(b)发明和评估十个旨在解决和减少某些情境障碍的负面影响的项目；(c)开发巧妙的可重复使用的传感技术，以便创建这些项目，并提高移动设备的能力；(d)研究针对身体或健康缺陷和残疾者的项目的“交叉潜力”。这项工作的更广泛影响包括：(a)推动移动设备和传感技术的能力变得更加有用和可用，特别是在各种情况下，这可能与移动现场工作人员有关；(b)具体证明无障碍研究使每个人受益，所有人在生活中都会受到这样或那样的损害；(c)通过减少情景障碍造成的危险，特别是对驾驶汽车的人造成的危险，为公共健康和安全作出贡献；(d)开设研究生课程、本科生讲习班和6-12年级的科学单元，讨论基于能力的移动计算设计。

A "computer user" can no longer be thought of only as a person sitting at a desk in a consistent and comfortable working environment. Today's typical computer user is now holding a mobile device smaller than his or her hand, is outdoors, under the sun or in the rain, and perhaps even in motion, such as walking or riding. However, mobile devices have no deep awareness of the environments in which they are being used, or how those environments will affect their users' abilities to act. Addressing this challenge is the central idea of this project. The approach is to better understand, through scientific means, and better accommodate, through clever sensing and design, the "situational impairments" that affect the new-typical computer user for our age, the mobile user. Although situational impairments have been noted in the past, few research efforts have looked at how to sense impairing effects and what to do about them. Innovations in sensors, inference, and user interfaces have the potential to improve mobile interaction in the presence of situational impairments, showing that accessibility is "for everyone." The intellectual merits of this work include: (a) scientific studies of some situationally-impairing factors on human performance; (b) the invention and evaluation of ten projects designed to address and reduce the negative effects of certain situational impairments; (c) the development of clever reusable sensing techniques to enable the creation of those projects and advance the capabilities of mobile devices; and (d) the study of the "crossover potential" of projects to people with physical or health-induced impairments and disabilities. The broader impacts of this work include: (a) pushing the capabilities of mobile devices and sensing technologies to become more useful and usable, especially in varied contexts, which may have relevance to mobile field workers; (b) concretely demonstrating that accessibility research benefits everyone, and that all people incur impairments of one form or another in their lives; (c) contributing to public health and safety by reducing the dangers situational impairments cause, particularly to and from people driving automobiles, and (d) creating a graduate course, an undergraduate workshop, and a grades 6-12 science unit on ability-based design for mobile computing.