Translation of Interview Broadcast on Austrian Radio FM4 with German in red and English in green.
by Bernward Fleischhauer
7/16/04

Anthony Hornof:

It's really hard to move the cursor around with your eyes the same way that you do with your hands because you
don't have the same sort of fine and careful control of exactly where you are looking the same way that you have
the fine and careful control of exactly where your fingertip is going to be.

Astrid Schwarz (Interviewer):

Anthony Hornof ist Professor für Informatik an der Universität Oregon.
Anthony Hornof is professor for Computer Science at the University of Oregon.

Gemeinsam mit zwei Studenten hat er das Programm Eyedraw entwickelt.
Together with two students he developed the program Eyedraw.

Allein durch die Bewegung der Augen kann man am Computer damit zeichnen.
Only by moving the eyes one can draw on a computer.

Ohne aufwendigen VR-Helm oder schwere Brillen mit integrierten Kameras werden die Augenbewegungen von einer am Computerbildschirm befestigten Kamera dem sogenannten Eyetracker zum Computer übertragen.
Without complicated VR-helmet or heavy glasses with integrated cameras the eye movement is transfered to a computer by a camera the so-called Eyetracker, which is fixed to the computer screen.

Anthony:

Clicking on buttons with the eyes is a pretty well established means of interacting with the computer using your
eyes. You have to make the buttons pretty big to make sure that you're looking at the button, but that's a pretty well established, solved problem. Like when you type with your eyes, you're looking at these different buttons.
But, being able to start drawing in the middle of just a white screen, that was what we solved. That's the new problem.

Astrid Schwarz:

Seine Studenten Anna Cavender und Rob Hoselton haben ein Programm in Java geschrieben, dass die Daten aus dem Eyetracker auslesen kann und in einem grafischen Userinterface darstellt, damit die User eben in der Mitte eines weißen Bildschirms zu zeichnen beginnen können.
His students Anna Cavender and Rob Hoselton wrote a program in Java, which reads the data from the Eyetracker and shows it in a graphical user interface, so the users can start to draw in the middle of the screen.

Wie das Programm jetzt funktioniert erklärt der Informatikprofessor:
How the program works is explained by the computer science professor:

Anthony:

Where ever you put your gaze on the screen, there's a little dot that appears. We call that the eye cursor. Now,
you can move this eye cursor all around the screen and it just moves and nothing gets drawn. But, if you hold your
eyes steady at a location for half a second, the cursor turns red. And what that means is the computer is saying to you when the cursor turns red, "If you continue to hold your eyes right here, I'm going to start drawing a line right here, or a box or a circle."

Astrid Schwarz:

Nachdem die einfache Kommunikation zwischen Computer und User funktioniert hat, haben die Entwickler dann festgestellt, dass essentielle Funktionen dennoch fehlen.
After the simple communication of computer and user worked, the developers realized that essential functions were missing.

(AMDundSafe(??)) zum Beispiel.
(AMDandSafe(??)) for example.

Anthony Hornof über die Probleme:
Anthony Hornof about the problems:

Anthony:

The key question was simply can the users control the drawing process. Are they able to make a line? Are they
able to make a circle where they want to do it? If they can do that, then colors are easy.

Astrid Schwarz:

Also gibt es jetzt auch Zeichnungen in Farbe.
Therefore there are also drawings in color, now.

Mit Eyedraw können Menschen mit motorischen Einschränkungen, die vielleicht nur mehr über die Augen kommunizieren, sich wieder ihrer Umwelt mitteilen.
With Eyedraw humans with motorical impairments, who maybe can only comunicate with their eyes, can comunicate with their environment again.

Die Informatikstudentin Anna Cavender, die das Programm mitentwickelt hat, beschreibt die eigentliche Zielgruppe:
The computer science student Anna Cavender, who had part in developing the program, describes the target group:

Anna Cavender:

We are targetting that towards children with mobility impairments who otherwise would not have a chance to
draw pictures at all. And we've found that this is really crucial for the developmental processes of children, and
these children are really missing out on that. So, its been really fun to watch people use it.