Paper Reading #14: A framework for robust and flexible handling of inputs with uncertainty

Comments:
Kevin Casey
Joe Cabrera

Reference Info:
A framework for robust and flexible handling of inputs with uncertainty
Julia Schwarz, Scott E. Hudson, Jennifer Mankoff, Andrew D. Wilson
UIST '10: Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology

Summary:
This paper discusses natural errors in today's new user input devices such as touch screens. The devices seem to be error prone and are computed to boolean values by the program which leads to a loss of data. In order to address the issue, this paper discusses replacing the boolean values with a decimal scale. This allows for logic to be used to assign a probability of an action opposed to just true or false.

Discussion:
This seemed like an interesting idea to me. I can see it being used in touch screens where a users fingers are too big. Accidentally pressing multiple buttons can give each different button a different weight or scale and if there is one button that has a greater weight than those around it, it can be interpreted as that button being the button meant to be pressed while the others were pressed accidentally.