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Interactive Devices
Several interactive devices are used for the human computer interaction. Some of them are known tools and some are recently developed or are a concept to be developed in the future. In this chapter, we will discuss on some new and old interactive devices.
Touch Screen
The touch screen concept was prophesized decades ago, however the platform was acquired recently. Today there are many devices that use touch screen. After vigilant selection of these devices, developers customize their touch screen experiences.
The cheapest and relatively easy way of manufacturing touch screens are the ones using electrodes and a voltage association. Other than the hardware differences, software alone can bring major differences from one touch device to another, even when the same hardware is used.
Along with the innovative designs and new hardware and software, touch screens are likely to grow in a big way in the future. A further development can be made by making a sync between the touch and other devices.
In HCI, touch screen can be considered as a new interactive device.
Gesture Recognition
Gesture recognition is a subject in language technology that has the objective of understanding human movement via mathematical procedures. Hand gesture recognition is currently the field of focus. This technology is future based.
This new technology magnitudes an advanced association between human and computer where no mechanical devices are used. This new interactive device might terminate the old devices like keyboards and is also heavy on new devices like touch screens.
Speech Recognition
The technology of transcribing spoken phrases into written text is Speech Recognition. Such technologies can be used in advanced control of many devices such as switching on and off the electrical appliances. Only certain commands are required to be recognized for a complete transcription. However, this cannot be beneficial for big vocabularies.
This HCI device help the user in hands free movement and keep the instruction based technology up to date with the users.
Keyboard
A keyboard can be considered as a primitive device known to all of us today. Keyboard uses an organization of keys/buttons that serves as a mechanical device for a computer. Each key in a keyboard corresponds to a single written symbol or character.
This is the most effective and ancient interactive device between man and machine that has given ideas to develop many more interactive devices as well as has made advancements in itself such as soft screen keyboards for computers and mobile phones.
Response Time
Response time is the time taken by a device to respond to a request. The request can be anything from a database query to loading a web page. The response time is the sum of the service time and wait time. Transmission time becomes a part of the response time when the response has to travel over a network.
In modern HCI devices, there are several applications installed and most of them function simultaneously or as per the user’s usage. This makes a busier response time. All of that increase in the response time is caused by increase in the wait time. The wait time is due to the running of the requests and the queue of requests following it.
So, it is significant that the response time of a device is faster for which advanced processors are used in modern devices.