Device that provide users with information through smells

 

Olfactory interface is based on generating smell and deliver smell.

The generating smell usually involves vaporisation either by destroying odour molecules in high temperature or making fine mist.Deliver smell usually involves a device that able to deliver smell to user

 

Some of advantage olfactory interfaces are reducing stress, subconsciously change mood of user and enhance memory

 

There are several limitation for the interface such as difficulty on finding natural odours and some olfactory disorders that users suffer.

 

There already some new tech that integrating olfactory interface such as smell-o-vision and FeelReal.

 

Future trends for olfactory interface is making it more practical and common to users.

 

Nature of the interface is the difficulty in implementing it since it hard to replicate the taste and producing a device that mimic the taste, and it is multimodal sensation.

 

There are 5 sense of taste which are umami, sour, bitter, salty and sweet.

 

Currently the technology of the interface are food simulator..

This technology has several purposes that are to present the food texture and simulate the multisensory sensation(sound, vibration and chemical taste)

 

Future trends of taste interface is applying the interfaces into training simulation, entertainment and food design.

 
Below is game on food testing by Geeks & Freaks group

In healthcare and hospitals settings, communication between departments and workers especially the doctors have been improved throughout using the interactive voice response system. Uddin et al. (2015) has described the main potential on integrating IVR system in healthcare environment is the ability to simplify the management tasks. Using voice recognition system, the workers able to reduce the time to search the reports and documentation significantly because the system able to transfer spoken words into text or command. Other current applications of IVR in healthcare system are allowed the anesthesiologists to enter the medication details and observation simultaneously and decrease the report turnaround time compared to conventional dictation method. However, the IVR system still comes with limitation such as more prone to errors than keyboard, need large vocabulary size, the continuity of speech and dependent of speaker efficiency on expressing the speech (Uddin et al., 2015). Also, the workers need to attend priori training in order to verify their capability in using the system under different conditions. Therefore, Uddin et al. (2015) further described that there are much work to do to improve the efficiency of IVR system in healthcare setting such as creating specializes data collection device, using more accurate data collection procedure and selecting the best text classification algorithms. 

The rapid development and research in speech and interactive voice response system has gaining attraction especially in customer support. Many companies have slowly shift their services from manual to automated system with fully supported IVR system. In most cases, the customers have acknowledge the IVR system in shaping towards more high quality customer interaction services. Alzahrani (2016) further discussed in Gatner research, 89% of organizations have stated the importance in focusing the client experience and 70% of customers have agreed to pay more for the brand that able to provide smooth and enjoyable customer service. At this point, integrating IVR in a system alone is not enough and it needed integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The poor conversationalist robots will be replaced and supplanted with AI programs that able to work efficiently and consistently with clients requests over time. In order to achieve the fully fledged AI with IVR capabilities, the AI program are being developed based on the three criteria. The first criteria as being stated Alzahrani (2016) is the Artificial Intelligence have the capacity to speak and respond similar to human tone or language. Secondly, the AI able to react accordingly towards the emotion depicts by the client’s tone and give correct respond (Alzahrani, 2016). Lastly, the AI program has been built up to handle and respond bulk emails and answer messages in mass.

 

Despite the usefulness of voice search, users still have various difficulties in using the voice-search system on their mobile device. In Jeng et al. (2016) interview session on usage of voice search system, they have encounter many issues being described by the users. Jeng et al. (2016) have stated the example of the issues that being faced by users are the challenges of search using voice input rather than using keyboard, certain types of words that are not easily being recognized, the suitable solutions or strategies whenever users encounters errors in voice input, the affective feelings of users when the system recognition generates an errors and types of situations in which users prefer to use or not to use voice search system. Therefore the functions that need to be redesigned are developing more prone voice input errors, system able to proposed topic familiarity and complexity, reformulate the query function to be able perceived more difficult words, recognize the acronyms and single-worded, creating clues or recommendation algorithm, able to frequently recognized confusing words and improves in perceiving words with uncertainty pronunciation (Jeng et al., 2016). Moreover, one of the biggest issues also is current voice response systems have hard times in recognizing the variety of accent. Jeng et al. (2016) further stated that most of companies such as Google need to perceive the issues and redesign their voice search system especially the formulation of voice queries and improving the recognition of words and speech to be able to provide accurate information search and presentation to users.

 

Interface elements:

a)      Input controls – buttons, text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, drop down 

b)      Navigational components – tooltips, icons, progress bar

c)      Informational Components- tooltips, icons, message boxes, modal windows

d)     Containers- accordion 

Best practices to design an interface:

-          Keep interface simple

-          Create consistency and use common UI elements

-          Be purposeful in page layout

-          Strategically use color and texture

-          Use typography to create hierarchy and clarity

-          Think about the defaults

-          Make sure system communicates what’s happening

Multimodal input:

-          Allow human to communicate naturally

-          Provides user with multiple input modalities

-          Permits multiple styles of interaction

-          May be simultaneous or not

-          Must consider modality fusion and temporal constraints

Advantage:

-          Natural/ realism

-          Flexible

-          Wearable devices

-          Robust

Disadvantage:

-          Aligning task with modalities

-          Aligning usage to user profiles

 

-          Enable users to move around in real or virtual spaces

-          Make users feel as if they are moving

 Locomotion (used by life scientists)

-          The act of an organism moving itself from one place to another

Locomotion (for humans)

-          Walking, running, crawling, jumping, swimming and so on

Implementation:

-          Treadmills

-          Treadmill-like devices

-          Walking interfaces

Future Trends
-         New tracker technologies
-         Reducing the physical space needed for real walking interfaces
- Changing economics

 

-  Auditory interfaces are bidirectional, communicative connections between two systems typically a human user and a technical product.

 

-  The side toward the machine involves machine listening, speech recognition, and dialog systems.

 

-  The side toward the human uses auditory displays.

-  These can use speech or primarily non-speech audio to convey information.

-  Auditory displays are not new and have been used as alarms, for communication, and as feedback tools for many decades.

-  Some of the needs that can be met through auditory displays include:

o   presenting information to visually impaired people,

o   providing an additional information channel for people whose eyes are busy attending to a different task

o   alerting people to error or emergency states of a system

o   providing information via devices with small screens such as PDAs or cell phones that have a limited ability to display visual information.

-  Sonification is the use of nonspeech sound to render data, either to enhance the visual display or as a purely audio display.

-  Sonification is routinely used in hospitals to keep track of physiological variables such as those measured by electrocardiogram (ECG) machines.

-  Audio output can draw the attention of medical staff to significant changes in patients while they are otherwise occupied.

-  A very basic type of auditory display, called audification, is simply presenting raw data using sound.

-  everything from very-low-frequency seismic data to very-high-frequency radio telescope data can be transformed into perceptible sound.

-  Listeners can often derive meaningful information from the audification.

-  GUIs use icons to represent different software programs or functions within a program.

-  The auditory equivalents of visual icons are auditory displays known as auditory icons and earcons.

-  These displays are very useful in translating symbolic visual artifacts into auditory artifacts

-  An example of an auditory icon is the paper—"crinkling" noise that is displayed when a user empties the Trash folder.

-  Earcons are a technique of representing functions or items with more abstract and symbolic sounds

A very common reason why sound may be used in an interface is to reinforce a visual message, such as an alert. Other reasons:

-  Reducing visual overload:Visual interfaces tend to be busy, filling as much of the screen as possible with information.

-  When eyes are elsewhere:Since sound can be perceived from all directions, it is ideal for providing information when the eyes are otherwise occupied.

-  When audio is more informative:Humans are very good at hearing patterns in sound.

-  Small or no visual display:Sound is therefore a good candidate for augmenting or replacing a visual interface.

-  Conveying emotion:The aesthetics of sound can have a great impact on the user's impression/feelings.

-  Annoyance:Sound is very good at drawing the user's attention. However, the urgency of the sound should be relative to the importance of the information.

 

-  Privacy:Sound is omnidirectional and thus cannot be directed at a single user unless they are using a headset or a handset.

 

-  Auditory overload:Displaying too much information in sound can result in that information losing meaning and being interpreted as noise.

 

-  Interference/masking:sounds can interfere or mask one another. Environmental sounds can also cause interference and/or masking.

 

-  Lack of familiarity:Sounds take a while to get to know and can be initially confusing to users

 
Article of “What is Interactive Voice Response (IVR System) says that the IVR system stand of to five benefits that will show a full performance for customer services. First of all, the IVR system show up as a professional and always on track on the company’s stability and focus on the customer support. Other than that, with IVR system it helps to resolve or figure out the issues even before engaging or being transferred with an actual agent to handle the type of question that is needed to be answer according to the customer needs. Whereby, some of the question that is asked can be resolved with a simple database queries. The IVR system helps to improve the call being processed efficiently, for instance, the agent intervention will be shortened as the first call is being transmitted to the IVR system to handle the transaction to which exact agent that meets with the customer service requirement. This also contribute to reduce the cost of operations because the IVR system will replace the large number of agents and the office receptionist also can be replaced to be working under the company.

 
Saqquaf et.al (2016) wrote about the implementation of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for college students to acquire any information in an easy way. the scholars can access any devices that appropriate and compatible with the application. The accomplished of the IVR operation thru conventional techniques which are technological, well timed and automated fool-proof manner have been used by managing the customer queries. Consequently, this operation system much like an actual customer operator as shown in figure below.