Mobile Computing Usability

Increasingly smaller and more complex computing devices have made the human interface to these systems more critical than ever. Multimodal interaction such as speech and pen can offer effective alternatives for handheld devices, which often lack keyboards or adequate screen space. However, this must be properly designed into the user interface (UI) to gain widespread acceptance. Further, the use of these devices in mobile environments heightens the challenge to provide maximum usability, expertise in UI design, spoken language technology, and wireless communications. The primary goal of this project is to fundamentally study the design and usability of interfaces to a variety of portable and ubiquitous computing devices.