Inferring user intention in stylus input systems

过去二十年的个人计算革命已经进入了一个新的阶段，在这个阶段，键盘-鼠标界面不再主导人类与计算机的交互。虽然长期的未来可能涉及对话界面、视网膜投影和计算机视觉手势识别，但目前被采用最快的硬件技术是针对笔或触控笔输入，在书目表面(即个人尺寸，通常是水平的，例如PDA、平板电脑)和铭文表面(即共享的，通常是垂直的，例如SMARTboard，iRoom)。基于触控笔的交互的一个吸引人的方面是它似乎承诺的交互的流畅性。笔和计算机应用程序之间的交互可以包括数据输入、注释、手绘、内容选择，以及与菜单和按钮等用户界面对象的交互。使用基于触笔的输入设备(如平板电脑)的用户希望获得在这些操作之间流畅移动的交互体验。然而，大多数笔式平板电脑通常没有提供用户期望的交互流畅性。这些程序在切换任务时需要频繁的模式切换，除了最简单的任务外，所有程序都会导致缓慢而迂腐的输入。这项研究试图在捕捉和分析用户的动作时，为基于触笔的计算机系统所执行的活动增加智能。为了做到这一点，这项研究的目标是建立用户用笔创建的内容和用户用笔执行的当前动作的模型。考虑到这些模型，研究的目标是开发计算机程序，在上下文中分析这些当前的动作，以推断用户在界面中执行操作时的意图。最终结果将是平板电脑界面，用户通过应用程序界面中的动作流畅地移动。软件应用程序有责任理解用户的目标，而不是用户有责任理解软件应用程序。

The personal computing revolution of the past two decades has moved to a new phase where the keyboard-mouse interface no longer dominates humans' interactions with computers.  While the long-term future may involve conversational interfaces, retinal projection, and computer vision recognition of hand gestures, the hardware technology currently being adopted most rapidly is directed toward pen or stylus input, on both bibliographic surfaces (i.e. personal-sized, normally horizontal, e.g. PDAs, Tablet PCs) and epigraphic surfaces (i.e. shared, normally vertical, e.g. SMARTBoard, iRoom). One attractive aspect of stylus-based interaction is the fluidity of interaction it appears to promise. Interactions between a pen and a computer application can include data input, annotations, free-hand drawings, the selection of content, and the interaction with user interface objects such as menus and buttons.  Users, using a stylus-based entry device such as a tablet computer, want an interaction experience that moves fluidly between these operations.  Pen-tablet computers, however, have typically not delivered the fluidity of interaction expected by users. These programs require frequent mode switches when switching tasks, and result in slow, pedantic input for all but the simplest of tasks. This research seeks to add intelligence to the activities performed by a stylus-based computer system when capturing and analyzing the actions of the user.  To do this, this research aims to build models of both the content created by the user with a pen and current actions performed by the user with the pen.  Given these models, the research aims to then develop computer programs that analyze these current actions in context to reason about the intention of the user when performing actions in interfaces.  The end result will be tablet interfaces in which users move fluidly though actions in the application interface. Onus is placed on the software application to understand users' goals, rather than on the user to understand the software application.