Human Computer Interaction – We Give It The “Nod”

(From Nods and winks:How to teach computers to make appropriate gestures, Feb 2nd 2010 | From The Economist online)

Researchers from the University of Southern California have created and validated a model for recognizing the appropriate timing in a conversation for a nod – they’ve figured out what cues lead a person to nod in a conversation (the previous model was much less efficient at predicting when a human subject would nod).

In an age when computing is becoming so interwoven into our experiences, improving user interfaces in just this way could be the next frontier in HCI.