The Disposable Personal Computer FAQ Significance. The significance of this might be about as great as the shift from teletype+mainframe, to the graphical user interface + networked workstation. Q. Is it driven by curiosity about the foundations, applications or limits of basic Science? A. Integration is one of the key successes of computer hardware design. Virtualising user interfaces seems also to be a useful goal - we can do a lot better than VCR, Microwave and Mobile Phone GUI designers have done to date and establish some novel principled design methodologies along the way (revisit the Apple User Interface Design Guidelines with holographic gesture and voice I/O!) Q. Is there a clear criterion for the success or failure of the project after fifteen years? A. Yes, we either have a usable 1$ computer or it costs more (or less!). Q. Does it promise a revolutionary shift in the accepted paradigm of thinking or practice? A. Yes, we move away from the keyboard/screen/mouse/pointer tyranny and the power tethered computer for good. Q. Does it avoid duplicating evolutionary development of commercial products? A. For sure, commerce is going this way for hardware. However, not for interface design yet. Impact. Q. Will its promotion as a Grand Challenge contribute to the progress of Science? A. In interaction, power management, etc, yes. We need a more focussed role for the research community in interaction and user interfaces. This might represent one such Holy Grail. Q. Does it have the enthusiastic support of the general scientific community? A. We would bet the Equator IRC-like people would say "yes". Q. Does it appeal to the imagination of other scientists and the general public? A. I think this is easy to "envisage" - perhaps there is a "Sinclair C5" risk if one was way adrift... Q. What kind of benefits to science, industry, or society may be expected from the project, even if it is only partially successful? A. Social benefit of an affordable computer is massive and obvious, e.g. telemedicine, support for personal permanent digital assistant (memory prosthetic is another grand challenge which this might help). More acceptable for non technical people, etc, etc Scale. Q. Does it have international scope? A. Clearly Intel as well as ARM, Motorola and Nokia, etc might have an interest. Q. How does the project split into sub-tasks or sub-phases, with identifiable goals and criteria, say at five-year intervals? A. It is easy to see how to separate out the various hardware and software and interface modality pieces of work. Q. What calls does it make for collaboration of research teams with diverse skills? A. CPU designers, I/O designers, display and audio and video capture, etc, etc - multi- modal UI toolkits, test and measure, etc Q. How can it be promoted by competition between teams with diverse approaches? A. We could have separate strands of approach starting from traditional computing (Intel, ARM) as well as integrated games people (Sony, Nitendo) and mobile phone (Nokia, etc) to see if different starting points lead to similar or diverse solutions. Timeliness. Q. When was it first proposed as a challenge? Why has it been so difficult so far? A. I don't think I have seen this proposed. Q. Why is it now expected to be feasible in a ten to fifteen year timescale? A. Early steps are promising. Safety of direct laser to the eye and so on might be a problem. Acceptability could easily be a barrier! Q. What are the first steps? What are the most likely reasons for failure? A. We have made a few first steps - writing down a strawman plan would help, for example: Stage 1. Setup a model for the way such a device could be powered! Stage 2 Experiment with computers with no physical input or graphical hardware display output - see what works Stage 3. Build some prototype UI toolkits for these Stage 4. Build novel applications (stage 3&4 are a development cycle) Q. What are the Measures of Success? A. Ubiquity of model would be a good measure - "a PC up every sleeve" is something we can look at, as well as attitude to h/w versus software. For the "side effect" research, we would expect some revolutionary new interaction models, program paradigms, and toolkits, as well as new applications - the WIMP (Windows/Icons/Mouse/Pointer) ideas would have been long overthrown and replaced by non-desktop metaphors. Context would be king. HCI community would have a focus for a set of research (usability, acceptance, etc). Workflow efficiency gain and other activities (media distribution costs, disabled use, many others spring to mind) which could be tested against the legacy systems.