Pictures of the Future       Spring 2005

As You Like It

No two people are alike. Although that’s a simple fact, technological solutions tend to ignore it. Just about everyone would like technology to adapt itself to users and address their individual needs. But such a capability is by no means a utopian vision. New technological solutions from Siemens can not only be adjusted to meet individual requirements; they can also automatically adapt themselves to their users.

People often feel overwhelmed by technology. For example, according to a study by Research International Deutschland, 57 % of all Germans complain that electronic devices are becoming more and more complicated. Does this mean that such devices should be equipped with fewer features and that manufacturers should adopt a bare-bones approach to most consumer products? Doing so would mean that we would lose out on a lot of helpful innovations. Personalized technology can offer a solution here, according to Dr. Irene Walther from FORSIP, a Bavarian Research Association, which is conducting research into intelligent individualization of human-machine interfaces. "Those companies that miss out on the trend toward personalization run the risk of losing their competitive edge," she says.

At Siemens, Dr. Stefan Schoen is addressing the issue of product usability and thus personalization as well. Schoen is the director of the User Interface Design Center at Siemens Corporate Technology. He believes that the personalization of medical equipment, automation systems, vehicle cockpits, cell phones, and many other systems is more than just a marketing idea designed to boost customer loyalty. Personalization can also help to simplify otherwise complex operating procedures. Schoen says there are basically two approaches for personalizing the operation, content and functions of technical systems: "Either the customers themselves change the system’s properties or appearance, or else the system adapts itself automatically to its owner’s habits and preferences." An example of the first category would be if the user replaces the casing of a cell phone or adapts the software by using menus, assigning certain commands to specific keys, changing the background image on the display, or installing new ring tones. However, researchers don’t want users to become too involved in the manipulation of software, since that could put the product’s operating logic at risk.

Profile Settings. The second category—automatic personalization—includes things like "collaborative filtering" approaches as practiced by online companies such as Amazon.com, whose software offers every customer a selection of products that might be of interest to him or her. The information that serves as the basis for the selection is taken from data on previous purchases and comparisons with other customers. In the future, Siemens Enterprise Portal, an internal site for employees, will use a similar approach. The portal will assemble content for each employee based on the department or area he or she works in. The criteria it will use are contained in a profile stored in the system. This profile will have information on the user’s job and department, for example.

An alternative to using predefined profiles involves having self-learning software "observe" the user to determine how he or she handles a particular device, and then apply this information to create a customized interface. This technology is still in its infancy at the Enterprise Portal. As Schoen points out, there are also some difficulties with automatic personalization systems. "Users could become paranoid if they don’t know what kind of information the software system is collecting about them," he says. Moreover, he adds that automatic adaptation to user behavior will only be accepted "if the characteristics of a device don’t change so frequently that they confuse users and force them to learn new features." In other words, personalization systems must be transparent and easy to understand. If, for example, someone always switches his or her cell phone into the weekend mode (different display image, ring tone) every Friday at the same time and then puts it back into the business mode on Monday morning, a self-learning software system could learn to automatically make those changes at the right time. "However, the device would first have to ask users if they want the mode to be changed," says Schoen’s colleague Bernd Holz auf der Heide, a psychologist who works on adaptive systems in the cell phone development department at Siemens Communications (Com). A similar procedure might be used for downloading music from the Internet, whereby the cell phone or its server would develop a profile of the user’s taste based on songs heard previously, and then suggest similar songs for downloading whenever the phone is turned on.

Phones with Feelings. The CX 70 Emoty marks an initial step in the direction of greater personalization. This cell phone, which Siemens recently introduced to the market, reacts to touch and can use images to communicate the owner’s mood. The phone’s keypad is used to control three-dimensional figures that can express up to ten different feelings. The unit’s housing contains motion and pressure sensors that register whether the phone is being pressed, stroked or shaken, and thus whether the figures Laura, Joey, or Wobble should appear happy, sad or angry. The animated images are then transmitted via multimedia messaging (MMS).

 "Emoty figures are just the beginning of what we call avatar technology," says Holz auf der Heide. Wobble and the other figures still have to be given their moods manually, but "the next generation of such avatars will be able to do much more," he adds. For example, users will not only define how an avatar should look, but will also be able to adjust its behavior (see Pictures of the Future, Fall 2003, "Virtual Beings"), making it active or passive, serious or funny. "Future avatars will be individual conversational partners; they will appear much like a butler and may even be able to react to the emotions of their owners," says Holz auf der Heide, who deomonstrates a prototype of the avatar he’s talking about. Holz auf der Heide wants his electronic butler to call a certain number. The butler does this, but the line is busy. It’s also busy the second time, and the avatar makes a frustrated face, thus imitating the likely emotion of its owner. When the line once again turns out to be busy, the avatar looks even more upset and suggests calling back in a few minutes. If the user agrees, the butler disappears and then reappears later.

"This simple model can be expanded," says Holz auf der Heide. For example, the user’s facial expressions could be recorded with the phone’s camera, after which image recognition software would be employed to assess the user’s emotional state. Additional sensors would not only react to the phone movements but also register the user’s mood through criteria such as perspiration or tension. "Personalized services will become an important trend," Holz auf der Heide predicts. "The cell phone is an ideal medium for this because it can expand the user’s real world as needed at any given time and at any location." Avatars could also work in the virtual world, traveling through the Internet in search of products, services, or information of interest to their users.

Cars also lend themselves well to personalization—a feature from which a vast supplier industry benefits. At the 2003 International Auto Show (IAA), Siemens VDO Automotive presented a study of a modular vehicle cockpit containing a driver and front passenger console, and a center console. All the cockpit elements have a standardized electronic interface, which means they can be easily replaced. The original concept has since been expanded with ideas taken from the world of computers. For example, the system now makes it possible for drivers to use just a few hand movements to combine frequently used multimedia features into a favorites list, thereby enabling them to tune in their preferred radio station or CD more quickly, or rapidly access a telephone number. Important information, such as the vehicle’s speed andcurrent route is projected onto the windshield. Here, too, users have a choice as to which content they want projected and which content should be shown on a multi-purpose instrument on the dashboard.

Guido Meier-Arendt, a specialist in human-machine interfaces at Siemens VDO, believes it would be ideal if "we used only displays rather than electro-mechanical instruments in the future." This, he says, would open up new opportunities. Users would then be able to create favorites lists for the multi-purpose instruments, and thus decide in a given situation whether they’d rather have the fuel gauge in view or the speedometer, for example. Meier-Arendt also has some new ideas for the multimedia display used to operate the radio, CD and DVD players, and TV. He’s decided that it makes no sense for users to have to deal with various operating interfaces when they’re already familiar with the menu for their home stereo or PDA. Instead, it would be much simpler if they could use these menus in their car as well (see  Home on Wheels).

These and other scenarios are starting to take shape at Siemens. For example, a number of teams have been coming up with ideas for common interfaces as part of the Smart Home company-wide project. The first thing that needs to be done is to have all devices at home linked to one another in a network and then connected to the outside world via telecommunications networks (see  Pictures of the Future, Spring 2004, "Intelligent Buildings" and  Fall 2004, "Software Standardization").

With this scenario in mind, Deutsche Telekom opened a demonstration home in Berlin in March 2005 that is equipped with a full range of appliances, communications solutions, consumer electronics, and home automation from Siemens, including, among other things, media servers for audio and video applications and set-top boxes for the Internet and cable television. When someone wants to watch TV and therefore also pull down the blinds and dim the lights, he or she can do this from the sofa using a PDA. In another scenario, the home’s cordless phone can be used as a universal information and communications device—for talking to visitors at the door via the house intercom, for example.

Residents who are out and about can also dial into the house control center using their cell phones in order to adjust the heat or check whether they’ve left the stove on, for example, in which case they can also turn it off with the phone.

Experts agree that such developments will progress further; the only question is how rapidly. "There has to be an alignment between what’s being offered and what’s actually desired," says Prof. Peter Mertens, an economist and computer scientist at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. "Personalization would proceed more slowly if data protection laws were violated or if negative attitudes about the technology spread." Prof. Norbert Szyperski of the Innovative Technologies business research group at the University of Cologne predicts that "personalization will play a key role in the development of technical solutions in coming years." And, as Stefan Schoen sums up, "Personalization must offer users clear added value that they’re willing to pay for."
                                                                                                                   Rolf Sterbak