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Solutions
By John Boyd,Rowan Dordick and Gill Bassak
Forms follow function
Workpad discovers China
Got milk of magnesia?
Tracking the wild customer
Forms follow function
by John Boyd
Transferred to the web, the act of filling out a complicated form has the potential to become even more tedious than it is with pen and paper. Luckily, researchers at IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory (TRL) have created an intelligent Web-form system that promises to make form filling easier than ever. The system, developed jointly with IBM Global Industries, is being field-tested by a Japanese insurance company.
To accommodate different screens and browsers, forms on the Web today usually allow for only one short item per line. They therefore tend to be simple. But a paper-based insurance form may cram several items onto a single line, and is often accompanied by an instruction sheet, generally in fine print. What would happen if a conventional insurance form, complete with detailed instructions, were translated into the usual Web format? "It would be very, very long," says Amane Nakajima, project manager of globalization opportunity exploitation research at the Tokyo lab.
Nakajima points out that page-description languages like PDF are not suitable for online forms, either. While they produce an attractive page that can be sized to different screens, they won't accept user input to the Web. "So what we want to do," Nakajima says, "is to combine the realistic view of a PDF with the capability of inputting over the Web, and also help the user with the task of what to input."
To create an intelligent Web form, the group is using a design tool based on XML (extensible markup language), a flexible metalanguage that can create other languages, as well as reformat documents to run on a variety of media. The resulting form is composed of three separate segments: a logical structure, a view or layout, and a guidance element for helping the user. The form's logical structure, written in XML, defines the data fields to be filled in, assigning them different tags according to their function: name, address and so on. The form layout, written in XSL (extensible style language), controls the location and length of the fields on the screen. And the guidance element provides context-sensitive help -- the "intelligent" aspect of the form.
Various kinds of guidance are at hand. Drop-down explanation boxes with accompanying tables of data can help a user decide between, say, a $10,000 or $20,000 collision-damage option. A highlighted item may signal the next item to be filled. And error boxes can point out mistakes such as filling in too many digits.
Better yet, the form offers only as much help as appears to be needed. "The guidance system uses a monitor to watch the user's operation, and it decides when and how to provide assistance," Nakajima explains. "If a user moves to a field and does not input for 30 seconds, an explanation box is generated." Help also appears if data is entered then erased several times. And if the person has never filled in a particular form before, simply moving the cursor over a field makes an explanation box pop up.
Because the form's logical structure and layout are separate, it's easy to change either or both elements. That means a form can be adapted for use by different organizations, or for filling out by people with special needs. Older people might view larger fonts, for example. Moreover, because the user data is also converted into XML, it can be stored on a server or database, available for converting into other XML formats used in different industries.
John Boyd is a freelance writer who lives in Yokohama, Japan.
Workpad discovers China
by Rowan Dordick
Worldwide, millions of people have discarded their printed calendars and address books for handheld devices such as 3Com's Palm® computers, which IBM offers as the WorkPad®. In theory, China could emerge as the largest market for such devices. The country is a major consumer of other electronic gadgets, such as beepers and mobile phones. And it is a natural market for devices that recognize handwritten text, since Chinese characters are difficult to input with a keyboard. Until recently, however, text entry has been a barrier to the IBM WorkPad as well; the popular Graffiti method of inputting text, using a set of standardized strokes, worked only for languages that used the Roman alphabet.
Today, with help from several projects at IBM's China Research Laboratory (CRL), the IBM WorkPad is shaping up to become an ideal platform for the Chinese market. The first step was to adapt Graffiti for character input. Users now have a choice of three input methods, says Hong Cai, a member of CRL's e-business technologies and solutions group. The first uses Pinyin, a system for writing characters phonetically with the Roman alphabet. A second method recognizes Chinese characters, so long as the strokes of each character are written in a certain order. "Currently," Hong notes, "the Chinese WorkPad supports simplified Chinese, which has fewer characters than traditional Chinese -- 7,000 versus 10,000 -- and fewer strokes in some characters." Finally, a hybrid method allows the first character to be entered phonetically and the following ones by strokes. Depending on the user's knowledge of pronunciation of Chinese characters, one of the methods may be preferable for a given word.
Other useful enhancements -- programmed into the WorkPad's read-only memory -- include an English-to-Chinese dictionary and a "localization" tool that helps in developing applications with Chinese user interfaces.
On the strength of these innovations, three different pervasive-computing applications have already been developed for the Chinese WorkPad, which point the way toward its future use in China. One such project, announced in July 1999, allows users to connect to brokerage firms through a dial-in service. "This is the first solution for stocks in China that runs on a pervasive computing device," says Song Song, the project manager of the Chinese WorkPad effort. A user interface designed at CRL allows people to buy and sell stocks or check on their performance.
A second WorkPad solution was targeted at companies with mobile workforces. Thanks to Mobile Connect middleware and software that provides Internet connectivity for Palm devices, the solution allows employees to use their WorkPads to carry out a host of useful functions, such as keeping track of customer information, retrieving enterprise data, checking the progress of an order or application form and calculating costs.
Finally, the Chinese WorkPad is proving itself in medicine. A project aimed at remote monitoring of blood pressure -- undertaken jointly by CRL and Tsinghua University, whose work was funded by a CRL university research grant -- has led to a broad-based medical solution marketed by a company called Tsinghua Tong Fang. Through a Web browser tailored to the WorkPad, and with the help of servlets running on an IBM Domino Web server, a health-care professional can access a medical records database anywhere, anytime, to obtain a patient's history and related information. The application also allows physicians to send prescriptions online.
Despite these encouraging starts, Song is quick to point out that the Chinese WorkPad solutions are still at an early stage of adoption. "As the market develops," he says, "costs will come down, enabling solutions for still other business sectors."
Rowan Dordick is the editor of Think Research.
Got milk of magnesia?
A joint venture between ibm and the online drug store PlanetRx.com™ has given the concept of pervasive computing a shot in the arm. PlanetRx.com account holders can now place orders for over-the-counter medicines and beauty products with a Palm handheld computer and a modem. To make such purchases possible, IBM is supplying technology from Research, in the form of specially adapted e-business software and "transcoding" software that reformats Web pages to suit small handheld devices. For the Palm unit itself, IBM researchers created a software application that puts a premium on ease of use. IBM is also providing the hardware platforms -- RS/6000® SP® and Netfinity® servers.
The Palm software -- which runs on the Palm III® or higher and can be downloaded from the PlanetRx.com Web site -- lets users purchase products they have previously ordered from the online pharmacy. Before long, customers will be able to purchase any PlanetRx.com merchandise, including prescription drugs. "IBM researchers carefully designed the system to include a level of security protecting users' data and privacy," says Marisa Viveros, senior manager of the pervasive computing solutions group at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. In another planned innovation, owners of Palm devices that don't have modems will be able to place orders whenever they synchronize their handheld with their desktop computer.
The arrangement with PlanetRx.com is an early milestone en route to a key IBM goal: to develop pervasive computing -- the use of many small networked devices or appliances -- as a convenient way to transact e-business. "We are achieving our goal of creating companion devices that naturally extend Web sites and provide convenience to users," says Viveros.
More on IBM's PlanetRx.com solution
Tracking the wild customer
by Gil Bassak
To display goods in a way that attracts shoppers
and prompts them to buy, store managers need to know which efforts are paying off and which are not. But that's easier said than done. "Retailers are dying to have good information, yet there is a dearth of useful data," observes Howard Sachar, whose image applications group at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center has worked on a number of retailing projects. Soon, however, stores may be adding an important new technology to their business inte
lligence tool kits.
A system code-named Footprints, developed at Watson, uses a network of ceiling-mounted infrared sensors to follow customer traffic through the store. Knowing people's browsing patterns would yield clues to customer preferences, enabling retailers to improve their displays and store layouts. Footprints would also allow store managers to instantly dispatch sales staff to high-traffic areas, shorten checkout lines, and improve the overall level of sales and service.
Footprints is a giant leap ahead of current tracking techniques. A common one -- recording shoppers on videotape -- is not only expensive but requires somebody to watch hours of mind-numbing footage. Meanwhile, exit surveys and "mystery shoppers" (workers who follow real shoppers and record their movements) provide spotty information at best. In contrast, Footprints can follow shoppers continuously, giving real-time information about where they go and how long they linger at particular displays. And because it does not distinguish personal characteristics or link customers' movements to individual identities, the system protects shoppers' privacy. "It works in a nonintrusive fashion," says Phillip Hobbs, who leads the sensor development effort. "It simply tracks you as a warm body, not as an individual."
The technology itself works much like a porch-light sensor, which turns on when it detects a body's infrared radiation. The Footprints sensor contains an array of such detectors. Mounted in a ceiling tile some 14 feet off the ground, one sensor can monitor 100 to 400 square feet. Thus, 400 sensors could monitor a retail area of 40,000 to 160,000 square feet. Innovative software makes it possible to track shoppers as they change speed and direction and cross each other's path.
Footprints technology is not limited to retail environments, notes Sachar. It could also serve as a tool for urban planning. An agency in Germany, for example, is interested in using Footprints to analyze and improve the flow of people in train stations. Footprints might also be used in the home, where it could detect fires, sense intruders or allow parents to check on wandering children. It could even be adapted to detect when someone has fallen down, and to automatically dial an emergency number.
Gil Bassak is a technical journalist and former practicing engineer who lives in Ossining, New York.
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