Split-Screen UIs for Small
Businesses
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A distinct feature observed in
computer use in developing countries is the high user-to-computer ratio. Often the
number of people who want to use computers is greater than the number of
computers available, due to economic constraints. To try to solve that problem for schools, we
have worked earlier on MultiPoint, which enables
multiple children to use a computer together at the same time, with each child
having his or her own mouse and on screen cursor.
If we take a look at other
settings beyond education, we’ll find a lot of scenarios where shared access is
the main mode of usage of the computer. Especially in small-business settings,
where we have observed numerous cases of a single computer being shared amongst
multiple users, often at the same time. The kinds of businesses we’ve been
looking at are very small business of less than 10 employees, who generally cannot
afford a second PC. The businesses may be dealerships, travel agencies, photo
studios, etc.
A lot of juggling of control
takes place as the multiple users need to work at the same time. They do so
without any logging-on or off, rather with users just getting up and moving
aside to let others use the PC, with minimization and maximization of relevant
windows. The typical applications are word processing, accounting (using
software packages such as Tally), image-editing, productivity
applications and browsing.
The Split-screen UI tries to
solve this problem of access at low cost, by allowing the users to plug in a
second mouse and keyboard, and then split the screen into two sections. Each
section runs a separate Windows session, and is tied to one set of a mouse and
a keyboard, hence allowing two users to use one PC simultaneously and
independently, as seen in the images. Though it may not work for all generic
applications, for the kinds of businesses we have been looking at, the
screen-real estate and CPU-usage requirements of the key work tasks are quite
limited – as the dominant work is either data-entry and lookup, simple document
processing, and browsing. For those kinds of applications, we feel that
Split-screen UI could be very valuable, given that it splits the user’s
hardware costs almost into half.
So overall, by adding just a
mouse and a keyboard, for some kinds of settings, one can instantly double the
value of a single PC!
There
are numerous issues for research. At the most basic level, we are allowing two
users to work completely independently on the same machine, sharing both the
processor and monitor, and are studying the technical and security issues for
the same. There are additional features we designing and working with such as
the ability for a user to take his or her cursor to the other’s screen, hence
allowing two cursors in the same application, if that is useful. We also have
some build features for sharing and collaboration – for example the boundary of
the two split-screen areas can be opened up to expose a third area – a kind of
“airlock”, which is accessible to both users and hence can be used as a point
to share files and resources.
We
have only conducted limited trials so far, but we are very interested in
looking deeper into the ergonomics of Split Screen. Initial studies suggest
that users are comfortable using half a screen at a time, and do not seem too
distracted by the other side, for simple applications. They treat it as they
would treat a single half window on a regular desktop. We anticipate
difficulties with some applications that inherently require a lot of screen
space. Our test subjects so far have co-operative and gentle, and there were no
issues with elbows pushing and prodding, yet. Ultimately, Split Screen offers a
particular tradeoff between cost and limited screen resolution. We have also
just begun experimentation with a configuration where you can also have two
separate screens operated by one motherboard: that solution eliminates any user
issues, but it costs more, since you have to purchase an additional monitor
(frequently the most expensive component of a PC set up).
There
are additional modes of collaborative work that are enabled by Split Screen. As
mentioned earlier, our current prototype enables a cursor to enter from one
screen split area to the other, for example, so that two people can work on a
single application at the same time. It’s possible that people could work on a
single document together at the same time, pointing out areas on the document
with their own cursor, discussing and working together (say if they’re writing,
designing or programming together). But we can extend this further and are
experimenting with ways of eventually allowing even both the keyboards to
access a single document, so as to allow more complex ways of working together
(multiple text input points in the same document, multiple selection areas,
etc.). In addition, we are experimenting with easy ways to share documents
across screens (e.g., the aforementioned “airlock” concept). For the purposes
of collaborative work, the idea is to introduce small innovations within the
larger context of the Split Screen UI model.
A
sampling of some of the press coverage for this project (incomplete…)
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/05/04/splitscreen_tec.html?category=technology
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/05/06/166231.shtml
For
more details, please contact Udai Pawar (udaip at microsoft dot com) or Kentaro
Toyama (kentoy at microsoft dot com) at Microsoft Research India.
Copyright © 2007, Microsoft Corp. Last updated on
July 24, 2007