The largest international gathering on Computer-Human Interaction

Humans, not machines, are taking center stage, said designers and researchers meeting here this week for the largest international gathering on Computer-Human Interaction. Just how that's happening was discussed and debated by more than 3,000 participants from all over the world at the conference, which ended Thursday. Borrowing from disciplines such as psychology and anthropology, they addressed topics ranging from wearable computing to the implications of culture on design. The computers they demonstrated can read handwriting, help the disabled scroll through text at the wave of an arm, learn when to interrupt someone and when not to, and even guess a user's mood. ``These technologies are revolutionizing the way people think about using computers -- or more importantly, stop thinking about using computers and have things happen the way you want them to,'' said Rick Rashid, senior vice president and head of Microsoft research. For the first time since the advent of computers, the focus has shifted from making people adapt to machines to making machines that adapt to human behavior, he said. The reason for the shift to a more human-centered approach is largely a matter of resources. Advances in technology mean computing power isn't scarce the way it was 20 years ago, he said. What's scarce now is people's time. The goal is not only to make computer systems as good as the best human assistant, he said, but to make them smart enough to understand the needs of specific individuals at different times and places. One technology demonstrated by Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz, for example, ``learns'' about a user's priorities by how that person responds to e-mail messages from various people, then begins to rank each incoming message, putting the important ones at the top. Horvitz also showed how the system tracks his face to determine if he is watching the screen and monitors how long he's gone to divert messages to a pager. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told the conference that many problems remain to be solved, namely that computers are too costly, intimidating for many and difficult to use.