Indexing unstructured activities with peripheral cues

Heather Richter, Andrew Skaggs, Gregory D. Abowd · 2005

A variety of ubiquitous computing systems have been built to automatically capture everyday activities in a number of domains. Many capture systems record streams of information that structure and form indices into the recording, providing users easy access to portions of interest. But this is challenging in very unstructured situations or unpredictable environments. In this paper, we explore introducing structure into the activity through the use of an artificial, unrelated, peripheral stream of information. We investigate the feasibility of this idea by integrating a stream of images into an existing meeting capture system. Our study suggests that this technique may be used effectively in some situations, and reveals similar methods of capturing and using indices that could be explored.

Read the paper · More papers on PaperTik