I am regularly asked how eye tracking, or gaze contingent eye control, will be used in consumer applications in the future. It is a tricky area, as our eyes are not good at fine motor control. Until recently, the technologies to accommodate for our eyes’ capabilities and allow gaze control have not been readily available; but things are changing!

In this post I’d like to introduce the concept of eye control as we know it and then show some new work on reading eBooks or the Web that really gets me excited!

Assistive Technology

For many years, Tobii Assistive Technology has been providing solutions for people with physical disabilities to control the computer with their eyes. The cost and size for these devices is rapidly decreasing. Making it much more accessible to a wider range of people. You can see Chris using a new Tobii C12 with CEye in the following YouTube video.

Thanks Chris!! (mobiletobii).

Eye Control for Specialist Applications

At a more specialised level it is widely recognised that eye tracking may help the design process by allowing people to do more things than their hands can alone. For example, Terry Winograd and his Stanford researchers report named “Eye Expose” tested people switching between applications with their eyes.

Eye tracking has also been successfully trialled for very simplistic menu interactions in laproscopic surgery, where Doctors can use an eye tracker to do things on the screen while their hands are busy. (Tien, 2005 and Tien and Atkins, 2008 [PDFs].

Eye Control Games

Eye tracking has also been done plenty of times in the gaming context. There are plenty of Tobii based research papers online and I have previously blogged about it. Tobii also promotes arcade gaming, facilitated by their new OEM technology, on their website.

Here’s a Tobii X120 used for controlling World of Warcraft.

You can also see a comprehensive list of eye control games research on Cogain’s Wiki.

So, where is all this headed?

Reading Enhanced With Eye Control

Recently, I found an example from some researchers at The German Research Centre for Artificial intelligence (DFKI). They used a Tobii C12 with the Tobii CEye eye control module to show how interaction with a book can be augmented with the eyes, for everyone!

Exciting hey?

Here’s a further introduction to their concept of Text2.0.

I love the bit at the end where the system faded out the irrelevant text once it knew you were speed reading.

I did a quick search of Tobii’s DIIGO database of academic eye tracking asbtracts and also found that Stanford Researchers, Manu Kumar and Terry Winograd also did a small study using a Tobii 1750 to augment reading by inducing scrolling behaviour. 

Research on consumer eye control applications is significantly advanced and it might not be long before all of us can have it at home!

Apple! Please strap some of this kit onto your next iPad please!!

Have you seen great examples of cutting edge technology research pointing toward ways of improving the consumer experience? Please share them with me!

I am so used to fitting all the guts of my communications into 140 characters and that is flowing on to other communications channels. Since using Twitter my emails are shorter and more to the point, particularly with people I know well.
When I write an email, I keep asking myself - Do I really need to bother writing

- Hi Such and Such,
- How are you?
- Kind Regards, James

I think that dispensing with some formalities saves me time and helps the reader get straight to my point?

But will my pithy emails be perceived as rude?

What do you think?

Export your personal tweets to a text file with Tweetdumpr >  copy and paste into Wordle >  Get a pretty word cloud of your tweets!

My heart goes out to all involved in the Melbourne fires.

Here’s a useful map from Google that I saw on Mashable. It takes Victoria Country Fire Authority data from an RSS feed and shows markers where fires are in progress, controlled or contained.

Mouse over to see info

Hopefully you and your loved ones are ok!

 So, while I was Googling myself I found this!

Breeze James, Marvel Comics, 1992

My Alterego is a female Marvel comic character from Knights of the Pendragon…

Wonders will never cease!

Imagine a person in a wheel chair using their eyes to control a robot to help them around the house or to steer their wheelchair?

Martin Tall has recently developed software to harness someone’s eye gaze, as captured by an eye tracker, and communicate with a small robot constructed with LEGO.

In Martin’s words, “The concept allows for a human-machine interaction with a direct mapping of the users intention”

Imagine if you could link this up with the Emotiv software, that I blogged about previously, and use your thoughts to control the robot too!

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Apparently this is a standard procedure all paramedics follow at the scene of an accident when they come across your mobile.

ICE - In Case of Emergency
We all carry our mobile phones with names & numbers stored in its memory but nobody, other than ourselves, knows which of these numbers belong to our closest family or friends.

If we were to be involved in an accident or were taken ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone but wouldn’t know who to call. Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency? Hence this ‘ICE’ (In Case of Emergency) Campaign.

The concept of ‘ICE’ is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. As mobile phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name ‘ICE’ ( In Case Of Emergency).
The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which number to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose. In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital Staff would be able to quickly contact the right person by simply dialing the number you have stored as ‘ICE.’
For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc. A great idea that will make a difference!

Let’s spread the concept of ICE by storing an ICE number in our Mobile phones today!

Technology helping people…

My iPhone typing speed improved dramatically yesterday!

"The iPhone is not about the press, it’s about the release", says my mate, and Mobile guru, Oli Weidlich.

Do you feel a little stressed when you type an SMS or write a note with your iPhone? It’s because you are trying to ‘press’ the buttons.

The little birdy in my head used to say "I hope I press the right key" and get frustrated when I had to delete and retype a letter or word. Or use that funny magnifying glass thingy that often renders off the screen.

Oli enlightened me that what you can do is slide your finger around the keyboard until the right letter pops up, without risk of selecting the wrong one, and then release it. My life has changed!

if this tip was plainly described in the store where I bought it, I could have immediately reach the amazing typing speeds compared to other phone, as claimed in this research about typing speed on different devices.

Last year I wrote about how daily technology hassles like this add up to stress people out in this presentation at World Usability Day Sydney 07.  Let’s get lots of these tips together to help make our daily lives S M O O T H E R.

This a cool new widget for those of you with lots of slideshows. Showcase your work or even better put all the shows from a conferece in one spot! Simply tag them all the same and it becomes easy to group them together. Here’s my randomness of shows:

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