Report on the INCITS/V2 AIAP-URC Standard

INCITS/V2, the Information Technology Access Interfaces Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), is about to formally propose a standard for “the discovery, selection, operation, and substitution of user interfaces and options” [6] for everyday appliances. Their approach is similar to that of our personal universal controller (PUC) project [9]: each appliance has an abstract specification of its functions and user interfaces for the appliances are presented on a remote control device that users have with them. The remote control device could be a personal digital assistant, (PDAs), mobile phone, or any other computerized device with communication capabilities (e.g. Tablet PC, wristwatch of the future, etc.). The interfaces presented on the remote control device could also be in several modalities, such as graphical or speech.

This report analyzes the V2 specification in detail, drawing on our experiences building the PUC system. We start by examining how the current version of the V2 specification addresses our comments on an earlier version, particularly by analyzing how the current standard meets our eight requirements for automatically generating user interfaces [10]. Then we contrast the current version of the V2 specification with our PUC system, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. The report concludes with an explanation for why we will not be using the V2 staprovides most of the benefits of our PUC system.