ABSTRACT
In traditional human-computer interfaces, a human master directs a computer system as a servant, telling it not only what to do, but also how to do it. Collaborative interfaces attempt to realign the roles, making the participants collaborators in solving the person's problem. This paper describes Writer's Aid, a system that deploys AI planning techniques to enable it to serve as an author's collaborative assistant. Writer's Aid differs from previous collaborative interfaces in both the kinds of actions the system partner takes and the underlying technology it uses to do so. While an author writes a document, Writer's Aid helps in identifying and inserting citation keys and by autonomously finding and caching potentially relevant papers and their associated bibliographic information from various on-line sources. This autonomy, enabled by the use of a planning system at the core of Writer's Aid, distinguishes this system from other collaborative interfaces. The collaborative design and its division of labor result in more efficient operation: faster and easier writing on the user's part and more effective information gathering on the part of the system. Subjects in our laboratory user study found the system effective and the interface intuitive and easy to use.
- 1.Yigal Arens, Craig A.Knoblock,and Wei-Min Shen. Query reformulation for dynamic information integration.Journal of Intelligent Information Systems -Special Issue n Intelligent Information Integration,6(2/3):99-130,1996. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 2.Tamara Babaian. Knowledge Representation and Open World Planning Using -forms PhD thesis,Tufts University,2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 3.Greg Barish,Craig A.Knoblock,Yi-Shin Chen, Steven Minton,Andrew Philpot,and Cyrus Shahabi. The TheaterLoc virtual application.In AAAI/IAAI, pages 980-987,2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 4.Jay Budzik and Kristian Hammond.User interactions with everyday applications as context for just in time information access.In Proceedings of IUI 2000,2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 5.P.Cohen and H.Levesque.Teamwork.Nous , 25:487-512,1991.Google ScholarCross Ref
- 6.O. Etzioni,K.Golden,and D.Weld.Sound and efficient closed-world reasoning for planning. Artificial Intelligence ,89(1-2):113-148,January 1997. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 7.Barbara J.Grosz and Sarit Kraus.The Evolution of Shared Plans.In A.Rao and M.Wooldridge,editors, F undati ns of Rational Agency ,pages 227-262. Kluwer Academic Press,1999.Google Scholar
- 8.D.Kinny,M.Ljungberg,A.S.Rao,E.Sonenberg, G.Tidhar,and E.Werner.Planned team activity.In C.Castelfranchi and E.Werner,editors,Artificial Social Systems,Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI-830),Amsterdam,The Netherlands,1994. Springer Verlag. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 9.Thomas Kistler and Hannes Marais.WebL -a programming language for the web.Computer Networks and ISDN Systems ,30(1-7):259-270,1998. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 10.V.Lesser,B.Horling,F.Klassner,A.Raja, T.Wagner,and S.Zhang.Big:An agent for resource-bounded information gathering and decision making Artificial Intelligence ,118:197-244, 2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 11.A.Levy and D. Weld, editors. Artificial Intelligence, volume 118. Elsevier Science, 2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 12.K.E.Lochbaum.A collaborative planning model of intentional structure.Computational Linguistics ,24, 1994. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 13.C.Ortiz and B.J.Grosz.Interpreting information requests in context:a collaborative web interface for distance learning.Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Journal,to appear,2002. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 14.C.Rich and C.Sidner.Segmented interaction history in a collaborative interface agent.In Proceedings of IUI'97 ,1997. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 15.C.Rich,C.Sidner,and N.Lesh.Collagen:Applying collaborative discourse theory to human-computer interaction AI Magazine,Special Issue on Intelligent User Interfaces,2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 16.K.Ryall,J.Marks,and S.Shieber.An interactive constraint based system for drawing graphs.In Proceedings of UIST,1997. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 17.S.Shieber A call for collaborative interfaces.ACM Computing Surveys, 28A (electronic), 1996. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- A writer's collaborative assistant
Recommendations
An Ontology-Based Assistant for Collaborative Processes
DEXA '11: Proceedings of the 2011 22nd International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems ApplicationsCurrent collaboration technologies encompass a broad range of tools that enable groups of people to work together and collaboratively create and manage knowledge. To facilitate the efficient use of collaboration tools, patterns have been exploited as ...
DESIGNING COLLABORATIVE USER INTERFACES: LESSONS FROM WRITER/GRAPHIC DESIGNER INTERACTION
Recent discussions about designing and building user interfaces for collaborative work have revealed a number of points. One of the most significant is that before we can concentrate on collaborative interfaces, we still have much to learn about the ...
Collaborative Accessibility: How Blind and Sighted Companions Co-Create Accessible Home Spaces
CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsIn recent decades, great technological strides have been made toward enabling people who are blind to live independent, successful lives. However, there has been relatively little progress towards understanding the social, collaborative needs of this ...
Comments