China HCI seminar series in Beijing - First session

China HCI Seminar Series
October 26, 2009

This is what I wrote from the first session in the China HCI Seminar Series which kicked off last night. This seminar series is meant to foster research and collaboration among HCI researchers in the Chinese community as well as abroad. It was held at the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. There was lots of people for the first session, so the turn out was really great like a large lecture hall! There were two talks after introduction by the organizers and distinguished Chinese HCI researchers.








Prof. James Landay, University of Washington, Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research Asia

Jonathan Grudin: A Moving Target: The Evolution of HCI

Keynote Speech

HCI started with Human Factors and Ergonomics with operation and data entry from 1905 to 1945, and then came the invention of general-purpose computers. HCI was one of five major IS research streams since 1967 (Banker and Kaufmann). Then there was HCI in Information Systems for managerial use. Finally Computer-Human Interaction happened in the 1980s with the beginning of the CHI conference and the establishment of SIGCHI. There was a focus shift from non-discretionary use to discretionary use. The Computer-Human Interaction stream started from the work of computer-engineer interaction and the work done at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). The actual goal behind human-computer interaction actually started with the work of Grace Hopper.

According to Jonathan, there is a shifting focus of interface development from the large hardware mainframes, to the PCs, and now in groups and mobile devices where it is used collaboratively. The graphical user interface (GUI) changed the field of human-computer interaction in 1985 with the Apple Mac computer. Jonathan showed a curve of Moore’s Law showing how as you move the number of years, there is a longer tail on the curve. The next big impact was in 1995 where there was unanticipated changes in audio, video and graphics. Now, if we continue the curve, what is the next big bomb and it is predicted that it will happen in 2015. Design started coming into HCI since 1995, but we have been neglecting design for a decade or so. There is now new research trend into emotional design.


History and evolution of HCI


Interface development

The amount of information will dramatically increase exponentially and increasingly significant focus in HCI. H.G. Wells made a quote which sounds very much related to what the vision of human-driven Web 2.0 systems is, and this was in 1905! There is now the emergence of information schools. James Martin from 1973 talked about the era of information scarcity and according to Jonathan, we are still in the age of information scarcity. Now, there is a merging of the physical and virtual world. We can learn something from the kids domain like WebKinz where kids can buy a stuffed toy, enter the code, and then can enter the virtual world where they have to feed their toy and can share with other kids’ toys. He says why this can’t be the same in the adult world like buying a car?



Desney Tan: Creating Novel Human-Computer Interaction with Physiological Sensing
Computational User Experiences Group, Microsoft Research
Desney's web site


Following Jonathan’s footsteps, the next big thing in the evolution of computing paradigms is natural user interfaces. Mind reading devices are now hitting the consumer market, and is now becoming a science. At Microsoft Research, Desney and his team is looking into classifying brain activity tasks and uncontrolled game tasks with greater than 80% accuracy. The goal is to have only a few sensors as possible with high accuracy. They can use the brain sensors to accurately classify images based on brain activity using EEG. Another goal is to take science fiction like Minority Report as reality, and use detection of hand gesture recognition. At Microsoft Research, there is Project Natal which is controller free interaction which will be shipped with Microsoft XBox. In order to make this reality, they use EMG armbands to use muscle stimulation in order to detect gestures. You can sense gestures on a hard surface like a table top using Microsoft Surface.

Games are a very good test of the research because they require accurate classification and fast classification. Their group created a test application called Air Guitar Hero that uses hand gestures to pretend playing the guitar. A third research theme is mouth gesture interactions for example using tongues that can be used with paralyzed people who cannot use their hands or arms. Desneyäs group created a device to be placed on the tongue with electrodes in order to sense the tongue with a micro+controller. The idea is that some children wear retainers when they are young but a reluctant to use them because they are not nice to have and make them look ugly. But if they were cool by using sensors to make them technologically advanced to use, would help adoption of them. An example is using your tongue to control a Tetris game. All the technology is now embedded in the tongue retainer. So what are some applications of tongue gesture interaction? According to Desney, we can use tongue gestures to control mobile devices like for example building a music player within your mouth. Another application is in medical sensing for salivary analysis and food analysis.

The last project is Bionic Contact Lenses where technology is embedded in the contact lens. An application could be to project information into the eye, for example, remembering who a particular person is by looking at that person. Another application is medical sensing such as glucose sensing with bionic contacts.

In closing, Desney is talking about the next evolution of HCI that will help bring computing into the real world.



At the end, there was some questions addressed to Desney and Jonathan.



All in all, a great start to what looks to be a great lecture series on HCI in Beijing, something that I miss from my alma mater at University of Toronto.

China in the Age of the Internet talk

Today, there is a talk in the Munk Centre at U of T called China in the Age of the Internet being presented by Guo Liang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The use of Internet in China is huge now, with companies like Google and Yahoo setting up shop there. The largest search company so far in China before Google is Sina.com. Most Chinese researchers don't use qualitative or quantitative methods, but now the younger generation is using them. In fact, lots of people use the Internet for means of communication and getting information, which would otherwise be censored outside the Internet. The use of Internet is growing fast in China, right now there are 130 million users in China (however it is difficult to measure because people use Internet cafes). People can get access to the Internet using Internet cafes, which is about 3 RMB/hour in large cities and 1 RMB/hour in small towns which translates to about $1 CDN for 3 hours.

His methodology is based on the World Internet Project and China Internet Project. The China Internet Project is based on a door-to-door household based interview. His conceptual model looks into media use and how it influences internet use and internet access.

In the history of the Internet use in China in 2000, the early adopters were young, male, well educated, and well paid. E-mail was not heavily used, and 41.6% did not use search engines, the Internet was primarily used for games. It's interesting that 76% of Chinese users did not make purchases online. It seems that Internet is more of an entertainment highway as opposed to an information highway in the Western world. According to 2005 survey, Guo says that the #1 online activity is reading news, whereas in the UK it is reading e-mail.

So why it is that online purchasing is not so popular? Because credit cards are not prevalent in China and there isn't much content, and also lack of trust. Not many people use search engines in China.

From the 2005 survey that Guo did, he found that pornography, violence and junk messages should be controlled. One would expect that Internet control in China is political, when in fact it is social control. Another interesting thing is Internet search in China. Google started an office in China about 2 years ago in 2005 but still it is not as good or is used that much compared to Baidu. In fact, none of the US internet companies have been successful in China (Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon).

So why is Baidu better than Google? Because Baidu knows Chinese content and Google has not done good marketing in China. Google doesn't understand the Chinese market. Baidu apparently is a good portal and service to search for MP3s. The Chinese internet users also seem to communicate online with their friends and colleagues than face-to-face or physically with family by traditional means. As a result, it seems that building an online community would be more viable and easier than here in Western culture like the US and Canada. Chinese users also are favored to use online comments on news where people can leave comments on news articles and spur discussion. In fact, the top 2 country leaders and the Chinese president learned about SARS from the Internet. Internet can affect public opinion which can then change current regulations to become law.

Lots of people also talk about Internet censorship in China, like how some certain sites are blocked because of the type of content or the keywords used. In China, people have to register their personal ID to the police for the internet (but not all do). You can get a pre-paid Internet card to use the Internet. Even blocked sites can be accessed through proxy servers.

More information on Guo's papers and research can be found from China Internet Project.

On Technorati: China, China internet