Carles Fernandes Julià

TurTan: A tangible programming language for creative exploration

This paper introduces TurTan, a tangible programming language for creative exploration inspired by Logo, which uses a tabletop interface with tangible objects. The aim of this project is to design a toy language for programming entertainment and creative purposes. Along this paper we also discuss some interesting technical issues we have found during its implementation such as tangible linking and angle mapping.

Interactive surfaces and tangibles

Tap. Slide. Swipe. Shake. Tangible user interfaces have some scientists toying around with stuff you can really put your hands on.

GestureAgents: an agent-based framework for concurrent multi-task multi-user interaction

While the HCI community has been putting a lot of effort on creating physical interfaces for collaboration, studying multi-user interaction dynamics and creating specific applications to support (and test) this kind of phenomena, it has not addressed the problems implied in having multiple applications sharing the same interactive space. Having an ecology of rich interactive programs sharing the same interfaces poses questions on how to deal with interaction ambiguity in a cross-application way and still allow different programmers the freedom to program rich unconstrained interaction experiences. This paper describes GestureAgents, a framework demonstrating several techniques that can be used to coordinate different applications in order to have concurrent multi-user multi-tasking interaction and still dealing with gesture ambiguity across multiple applications.

Development strategies for tangible interaction on horizontal surfaces

Tangible interactions on horizontal surfaces are increasingly relevant for collaborative applications, embodied interaction, musical performance, and interaction with 3D information. This unique studio opportunity introduces approaches to developing applications on four related platforms: the Reactable: a musical tabletop, and its companion fiducial tracking system reacTIVision, Microsoft Surface: a commercial multi-touch table, MemTable: a large interactive tabletop, and Relief: a responsive 3D surface. It will focus on the unique affordances of multi-input and multi-user event handling shared and afforded by each of the four platforms. Participants will work in small groups within some simplified code templates to develop a small applications focused on co-located input by multiple people, combining the use of tangible objects and touch input.

Prototyping interactions with Online Multimodal Repositories and Interactive Machine Learning

Interaction designers often use machine learning tools to generate intuitive mappings between complex inputs and outputs. These tools are usually trained live, which is not always feasible or practical. We combine RepoVizz, an online repository and visualizer for multimodal data, with a suite of Interactive Machine Learning tools, to demonstrate a technical solution for prototyping multimodal interactions that decouples the data acquisition step from the model training step. This way, different input data set-ups can be easily replicated, shared and experimented upon their capability to control complex output without the need to repeat the technical set-up.

Towards Concurrent Multi-Tasking in Shareable Interfaces

Shareable interfaces, those that can be interacted simultaneously by several users, are a common tool used both in CSCW research and in real world applications. They tend however to lack a capability that has been traditionally relevant to the usefulness of computing systems: multi-tasking. In this paper we explain why a combination of the multi-user features of shareable interfaces and the multi-tasking capabilities of general-purpose computing, could be relevant for building useful systems, and why these features are not present today in most of the current prototypes and systems. We also discuss possible approaches for solving the problems that prevent shareable interfaces to fully support multi-tasking, and we present a novel approach based on a distributed, application-centered, content-based gesture disambiguation. We describe how an already existing framework, GestureAgents, implements this new approach, focusing on expanding the description of the relevant elements related to this problem, and conclude with some example applications and a discussion.

Using MTCF for live prototyping on tablet and tangible tabletop devices

Multi-touch technologies have been increasing its popularity in the last decade. Nowadays we can find a plethora of devices that includes this technology: tablets, smartphones or even in desktop computers. In parallel tangible tabletop surfaces started to appear in the global market with devices such as Reactable. What all this devices have in common is its programming cycle often time consuming and hard to prototype. We propose another approach to prototyping new applications by using a graphical programming language (Pure data) and a live coding framework specially developed for tangible and multi-touch surfaces and for Android devices.