Topic 2 - Two Interaction types

Interaction Types

1. Exploring interaction type:

This is a type of interaction which involves the users moving around in a virtual or a physical environment. One of the applications that suits this type of interaction is the YELP. It is a mobile application which helps users to identify the restaurants or eateries which are present nearby. This application perfectly fits the physical environment of the exploring interaction.

YELP and its exploring interaction type:

YELP as described is above is a mobile application that can provide users with online reviews about restaurants that are nearby. It has a particular functionality called as monocle which enables users to open their phone camera through the app and instantly displays the surrounding restaurants along with their ratings. These ratings and restaurants will be augmented to the phone’s camera display. An example screen dump of the application used inside NTU to find a restaurant is given below.

Fig 1: The app showing the restaurants available in particular locality when the user points the camera at a direction. The information displays the restaurant name, address, rating and the distance from current location.

On clicking a particular restaurant that is being displayed on the camera through augmented reality, the user will be taken to a new page with more detailed view. A screen dump of that screen too is provided below.

Fig 2: A detailed view of the restaurant the user chooses from the augmented reality screen.

The application involves the user to move through the physical environment. This is because the user has to move around with the camera view to locate the restaurants in the locality. The application uses both augmented reality and location services to provide user the required details. Hence, this application is based on the exploring interaction type to enable user to be involved physically.

2. Conversing interaction type:

In this type of interaction the users can converse with the application through voice. There are many application in market which will match this kind of interaction. Here we take Vilingo Virtual Assistant. This application is more like a personal assitant. This application will keep track of our messages, schedules, meetings etc. We can also reply for the message update status by giving instrcution over voice.

VLINGO and its conversing interaction type:

Vlingo as described is above is a mobile application which will act as an users personal assistant. This application is mainly useful when we are performing some other activities and at the same time if we want to attend phone calls or reply to a message or email and even we can update our status in our social profiles like facebook and twitter, we can do these task simultaneously with the help of this application. In real time scenario, For example, while we are driving a car, we may get a call or message and we should not attend them as per rules. This application will help us to know who is calling and it will also read out the message for us.

Fig 3. Vlingo Application which can recognise our voice input

Thus this application uses voice recognition process to translate our voice input to a task to be performed. It is really helpful in performing some action which we would like to do using mobile by our voice input. Screen shots of this application is provided below.

Fig 4. Replying to the message just by reading out the message and the app will capture it as text

The application will also keep track of our tasks and meeting schedules and it will update about those tasks and schedule. The only difficulty in using this application is we should communicate in proper english else the application will get confusion and it will misinterrupt our command and end up in doing different task.