Flights in my hands : coherence concerns in designing Strip'TIC, a tangible space for air traffic controllers

Best Paper Honorable Mention awardInternational audienceWe reflect upon the design of a paper-based tangible interactive space to support air traffic control. We have observed, studied, prototyped and discussed with controllers a new mixed interaction system based on Anoto, video projection, and tracking. Starting from the understanding of the benefits of tangible paper strips, our goal is to study how mixed physical and virtual augmented data can support the controllers' mental work. The context of the activity led us to depart from models that are proposed in tangible interfaces research where coherence is based on how physical objects are representative of virtual objects. We propose a new account of coherence in a mixed interaction system that integrates externalization mechanisms. We found that physical objects play two roles: they act both as representation of mental objects and as tangible artifacts for interacting with augmented features. We observed that virtual objects represent physical ones, and not the reverse, and, being virtual representations of physical objects, should seamlessly converge with the cognitive role of the physical object. Finally, we show how coherence is achieved by providing a seamless interactive space

Evaluating heuristics for tabletop user segmentation based on simultaneous interaction

Differentiating between users that interact on a tabletop could be beneficial for collaborative tasks to support territoriality-oriented features such as a more efficient space management or a better presentation of the contents. In this paper, we design a novel algorithm for the user differentiation or segmentation based on the simultaneous manipulation of the controls. This is a potential differentiating factor that has remained unexplored so far, and in combination with other factors may become relevant to successfully accomplish such differentiation task. Basically it relies on the idea that users manipulate digital elements with a single hand, and hence, if two controls are being used at the same time, they most likely belong to different users. On the generic algorithm, three different versions have been implemented that include several heuristics to address the problem. The comparison under a simulated experiment shows that the heuristic involving more knowledge on distances on user controls performed better according to different goodness functions. This shows promising to further development and refinement of the approach by expanding it with other potential factors to eventually build a robust user differentiation subsystem.This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National Strategic Program of Research and Project TSI2010-20488. Our thanks to the ASIC/Polimedia team for the support in computer hardware.García Sanjuan, F.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2013). Evaluating heuristics for tabletop user segmentation based on simultaneous interaction. Expert Systems with Applications. 40(14):5578-5587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2013.04.011S55785587401

An empirical evaluation of touch and tangible interfaces for tabletop displays

Tabletop systems have become quite popular in recent years, during which there was considerable enthusiasm for the development of new interfaces. In this paper, we establish a comparison between touch and tangible interfaces. We set up an experiment involving several actions like translation and rotation. We recruited 40 participants to take part in a user study and we present our results with a discussion on the design of touch and tangible interfaces. Our contribution is an empirical study showing that overall, the tangible interface is much faster but under certain conditions, the touch interface could gain the upper hand

TryFilm : Situated Support for Interactive Media Productions

The emergence of participatory, on-demand and interactive media is changing the media production landscape. Producing interactive media is often more complex than creating traditional linear films, resulting in increased pressure for production teams. In this paper we explore what implications this has for cast and crew who participate in the production of such new media. We explore how collaborative technologies can support creative practitioners, within these challenging settings. We present TryFilm, a collaborative editing system, designed by the authors and deployed during an interactive film shoot by a small film company featuring a cast of early career actors

Photo mementos: designing digital media to represent ourselves at home

We examine photos in the family home as examples of mementos, cherished objects kept in memory of a person or event. In a ‘memory tour’, we asked participants to walk us through their family home selecting and discussing significant mnemonic objects. With each personal narrative we recorded memento location, i.e. the room, place within the room and any nearby objects. Although photos were not the most popular mementos, when chosen they were highly significant, and often unique. These photo mementos were usually not representational but symbolic, where only the owner knows their many layers of meaning. Photos from different times in the person’s life were strategically placed in different rooms. Their location afforded different functions, e.g. photo mementos in family spaces reinforced family bonds, photo mementos in personal spaces were for immersive reminiscing, whereas those in public rooms had an aesthetic value and to spark conversations with visitors. Finally photo mementos were rarely isolated: they were clustered in displayed albums or stored with other memorabilia in boxes or drawers to represent a stage in life. We explore the implications of these findings by designing potential new home photo technologies, looking at how new designs might support the types of behaviours observed. Through four conceptual designs we examine how photo technology might integrate into the practices and aesthetic of the family home. The concepts led to a set of concluding considerations that need to be taken into account when designing new forms of display technology that are part of a larger domestic photo system

Towards the Paperless Office : Ecology of artifacts at work

Stepping one step closer to the paperless office by looking into existing technologies. Looking at the whole ecology of digital artifacts of users. Only by understanding how people use paper, how they relate to their digital ecology of artifacts, and what makes them adopt new products can we hope to get one step closer to the paperless office. There has been an extreme growth in mobile devices the last couple of year, and there have been a couple of new platforms emerging in the mobile ecology. This spark in multiple devices at the office leads to new ways of looking at how the existing ecology of digital artifacts can support some of the affordances of paper. The new emerging platforms transform the concept of compatibility in the mobile ecology. Because of this the earlier thought on what the limitation of the existing technologies are not that relevant any more. The problem seem to lie more in the way people deal with context and labeling and how this leads to consumers use of digital artifacts in a sequential manner

Light on horizontal interactive surfaces: Input space for tabletop computing

In the last 25 years we have witnessed the rise and growth of interactive tabletop research, both in academic and in industrial settings. The rising demand for the digital support of human activities motivated the need to bring computational power to table surfaces. In this article, we review the state of the art of tabletop computing, highlighting core aspects that frame the input space of interactive tabletops: (a) developments in hardware technologies that have caused the proliferation of interactive horizontal surfaces and (b) issues related to new classes of interaction modalities (multitouch, tangible, and touchless). A classification is presented that aims to give a detailed view of the current development of this research area and define opportunities and challenges for novel touch- and gesture-based interactions between the human and the surrounding computational environment. © 2014 ACM.This work has been funded by Integra (Amper Sistemas and CDTI, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) and TIPEx (TIN2010-19859-C03-01) projects and Programa de Becas y Ayudas para la Realización de Estudios Oficiales de Máster y Doctorado en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2010

Print versus screen—presentation medium-dependent picture consumption

Part I: The use of digital technologies has forever changed how consumers are capturing, sharing, and storing their pictures. The long-term objective of Part I of this study is to obtain an overall picture of the current state of consumer photographers’ practices. While digital camera owners are taking more photos than ever before, most are not printing them. However, experiments conducted on the presentation mediumdependent differences in picture consumption showed that a majority of the participants prefer printed images to images viewed on a screen. Regardless of this preference, participants did not print images very often for a variety of reasons, including lack of time or money. In addition, results showed that the most commonly used printing tools included Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Shutterfly, and Flickr. Finally, participants cited Photoshop, Lightroom, and Picasa as the primary editing tools, with Facebook being mentioned as the main sharing tool. Parts II & III: The advent of digital print engines capable of achieving high image quality has opened up many new and exciting print product opportunities, including the short-run printing of magazines. However, content available for magazines is also readily available on-line. It is not immediately obvious that the capability of creating a short-run magazine translates into a viable business model; just because they can be printed does not necessarily mean that it makes sense to do so. The objective of this project was to take the first steps toward identifying and understanding the differences in how information is consumed from print on paper versus computer display and which characteristics of these media are particularly relevant in this comparison. Longer-term, it is intended to explore how such differences affect the efficacy of magazine advertising. This evaluation involved an assessment of differences for several metrics, including information retention, time taken to view images, preference for visually consuming information, and distribution of visual gaze as measured by eyetrackers. Experimentation was conducted that focused on the first three of these four factors (Part II). Experimentation in Part III generally confirmed the results of this study: specifically, that people preferred the hard copy rendition over a PDF when given the choice (for reasons of image accessibility and tangibility), and that neither the time used to view the photo books nor information retention as measured by image recognition and information recall were affected by the medium in which the photo book was seen. The results of this study also agreed with earlier research findings that observers tend to fixate first and most often in the central areas of images. This research also found, however, important differences between how the observers viewed the printed and screen versions of the photo book, with the screen group having more fixations per image for many of the images early in the book (though not spending more time with these images), while the print group switched more often between images. While the work conducted in Part II suggested that there were no important differences between the print and screen groups of observers, the results of Part III hint at differences that may be important with regard to individual images or image layouts. Further work involving image content with a more balanced mix of text and pictorial imagery might prove useful in exploring these findings further

An Exploratory Study of Storytelling Using Digital Tabletops

Storytelling is a powerful means of communication that has been employed by humankind from the early stages of development. As technology has advanced, the medium through which people tell stories has evolved from verbal, to writing, performing on stage, and more recently television, movies, and video games. A promising medium for the telling of stories in an in-person, one-on-one or one-to-many setting is a digital table—a large, horizontal multi-touch surface—that can provide quick access to visuals and narrative elements at the touch of one’s hands and fingers. In this work, I present the results of an exploratory study on storytellers’ interaction behaviours while working with digital tables, and its physical counterparts of sand and water. My results highlight some of the differences in these media that can both help and hinder a storyteller’s narrative process. I use these findings to present design implications for the design of applications for storytelling on digital multi-touch surfaces

External legibility and seamlessness in interface design

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-108).This thesis presents External Legibility: a property of user interfaces that affects the ability of non-participating observers to understand the context of a user's actions. Claims of its value are supported with arguments from the social sciences and human-computer interaction literature; research in designing tangible user interfaces; and an experiment comparing the external legibility of four interaction techniques.by Jamie B. Zigelbaum.S.M