Interfaces that adapt like humans

Abstract

Whenever people talk to each other, non-verbal behaviour plays a very important role in regulating their interaction. However, almost all human-computer interactions take place using a keyboard or mouse - computers are completely oblivious to the non-verbal behaviour of their users. This paper outlines the plan for an interface that aims to adapt like a human to the non-verbal behaviour of users. An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) for counting and addition is being implemented in conjunction with the New Zealand Numeracy Project. The system's interface will detect the student's non-verbal behaviour using in-house image processing software, enabling it to adapt to the student's non-verbal behaviour in similar ways to a human tutor. We have conducted a video study of how human tutors interpret the non-verbal behaviour of students, which has laid the foundation for this research. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.