Introducing Roboticising User Interfaces (RUIs)

Abstract

I propose the notion of Roboticising User Interfaces (RUIs) that help cope with the daily problems we let into our homes and lives by automation. A culture of cooperation in the form of recommendations and requests is established by enabling a system to become part of a bidirectional (voiceless) dialogue instigated by the (implicit) interaction between human and machine. The means of communication on the system side are based on gestures made up of the psychophysical stimuli resulting from mechanics; users respond to such recommen-dations or requests by interacting with the system based on the given interaction paradigm(s). During a first empirical study with 15 participants, a prototype of a RUI in the form of a lighting system has been investigated. It can be derived that RUIs enable to articulate intent. Moreover, indications were found that allow the assumption that by positively influencing their user's behaviour, automated systems with a RUI have a greater supporting effect in achieving an arbitrary but common goal (often the reason for automation in the first place) than those without one.