My research field

When asked what my research field is, I give various answers, sometimes calling my work interdisciplinary, and sometimes just talking about the specifics of my recent work. But for people who don't like that kind of answer, I say something like the following . . .

I am active in an emerging field of study, which can be called "Responsive Systems" or "Interaction Engineering". This field, although new, has deep roots:

• Work in Computer-Human Interaction. Since the 1930s, Time-and-Motion studies and studies of Human Factors and Ergonomics have revealed much about how people work, and about how to build machines that enable people to work well. With the birth of computers, suddenly the opportunities and problems are multiplied --- computer interface designers being largely unfettered by any constraints of the real world.

  The 1980s saw the growth of User Modeling research, aiming to enable software to behave differently, based on the infered needs of the person who is interacting with it. The possibilities here have widened with the development of input modalities other than mouse clicks and text entry. As it becomes possible for computer systems to learn about the user by watching his face, or paying close attention to his tone of voice, his choice of words, and how he times his actions, it becomes possible for systems to infer much more about what the user wants, what he is thinking, and how his cognitive state is varying from second to second.

  In parallel, the vast world of game software has rapidly evolved to a state where 3-D graphics, surround sound, and realistic characters make game-playing a completely engaging experience. There is also the world of toys, including clever little agents such as the Tamogochi and the Furby.

• Work in Artificial Intelligence. In the 1960s, the Eliza (Doctor) program demonstrated that people are willing to interact with computer systems as if they were human. In the 1990s, work in chatterbots, intelligent agent systems, and real humanoid robots has shown the desirability and potential value of computer systems with cooperative personalities, but has also shown how difficult it is to build systems that provide a truly satisfactory user experience.

• Work in Interpersonal Psychology and Linguistic Pragmatics. Despite a long history, interpersonal psychology has been hampered by the difficulty of applying quantitative methods. In the 1970s there was a first flurry of studies, based on the analysis of videotapes of real human interaction, but quantitative methods were almost unknown until the 1990s, when the availability of cheap large disks, together with statistical techniques, has enabled the detailed analysis of large corpora of audio or video records of human interaction. Another recent development is the availability of computers fast enough to allow experimental studies of real-time social interaction, with the computer taking the role of a social agent.

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