Eager

Eager was one of the first intelligent agents. It assists users in performing repetitive tasks. It constantly watches your actions on the computer, and when it detects a repetitive activity, it writes a program that performs that activity for you.

Eager is a programming by demonstration system. It is able to detect patterns in a user's actions, and to write a computer program that automates those actions. It can be thought of as a smart macro recorder. It is "smart" because it does not have to be turned on -- it detects repetitive patterns by itself -- and because it is able to make generalizations. For instance, if the user types 1, 2, 3, Eager is able to continue typing 4, 5, and so on.

Eager Demo Movie

Eager Movie (mp4)

Eager Movie (QuickTime)

Publications about Eager

[CHI'91 Video]

Cypher. Allen. Eager: Programming Repetitive Tasks by Example. Technical Video Program of the SIGCHI '91 conference, New Orleans, LA, April 27 - May 2, 1991. SIGGRAPH Video Review, Issues 63&64, no. 8.

[CHI'91]

Cypher, Allen. "Eager: Programming Repetitive Tasks by Example". In Proceedings of CHI, 1991 (New Orleans, April 28 - May 2). ACM, New York, 1991, pp. 33-39.

[WWID]

Cypher, Allen. "Eager: Programming Repetitive Tasks by Demonstration". In Cypher A, ed. Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1993, pp. 205-217.

[Readings in HCI]

Cypher, Allen. "Eager: Programming Repetitive Tasks by Example". In Baecker, Grudin, Buxton, and Greenberg, eds., Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1995, pp. 804-810.

[Interactions User Study ]

Kvavik, K., Karimi, S., Cypher, A., and Mayhew, D. "User-Centered Processes and Evaluation in Product Development". In Interactions , volume 1.3, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, July, 1994, pp. 65-71.

[Apple Technical Report User Study ]

Karimi, Shifteh and Cypher, Allen. "Eager: A User Study", ATG Human Interface Group Technical Report 89-09, Apple Computer, Cupertino, CA, 1989.


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