Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

We are reaching a crisis with design of user interfaces for consumer electronics. Flashing 12:00 time indicators, push-and- hold buttons, and interminable modes and menus are all symptoms of trying to maintain a one-to-one correspondence between functions and physical controls, which becomes hopeless as the number of capabilities of devices grows. We propose instead to orient interfaces around the goals that users have for the use of devices.
We present Roadie, a user interface agent that provides intelligent context-sensitive help and assistance for a network of consumer devices. Roadie uses a Commonsense knowledge base to map between user goals and functions of the devices, and an AI partial-order planner to provide mixed-initiative assistance with executing multi-step procedures and debugging help when things go wrong.
Current consumer electronics are getting more and more complicated, threatening to outstrip the competence that can be reasonably expected from their intended users. For example, a typical consumer camera, the Canon S500, has 15 buttons, two dials, 4 x 2 mode switches, 3 menus of 5 choices in each mode, each with two or three values, 7 on-screen mode icons, etc.