David Holman

Paper windows: interaction techniques for digital paper

In this paper, we present Paper Windows, a prototype windowing environment that simulates the use of digital paper displays. By projecting windows on physical paper, Paper Windows allows the capturing of physical affordances of paper in a digital world. The system uses paper as an input device by tracking its motion and shape with a Vicon Motion Capturing System. We discuss the design of a number of interaction techniques for manipulating information on paper displays.

Organic user interfaces: designing computers in any way, shape, or form

Displays on real-world objects allow more realistic user interfaces.

Low-Cost Malleable Surfaces with Multi-Touch Pressure Sensitivity

While touch sensitivity has today become commonplace, it is oftentimes limited to a single point of contact with a hard, rigid surface. We present a novel technique for the construction of a malleable surface with multi-touch sensitivity. The sensor is pressure sensitive and responds to near zero-force touch from any object. The technique is an extension of previous work based on frustrated total internal reflection.

Unifone: designing for auxiliary finger input in one-handed mobile interactions

We present Unifone, a prototype mobile device that explores the use of auxiliary finger input in one-handed mobile interaction. Using force-distributed pressure sensing along the side of device, we examine how squeeze-based gestures impact four common mobile interactions: scrolling, map navigating, text formatting, and application switching. We evaluated the use of Unifone in these tasks using one-handed interactions by the non-dominant hand. Our user study shows that one-handed isometric gestures perform best when they augment rather than restrict or alter the primary pointing action of the thumb and, generally, are suitable for coarse isometric pressure input.

TactileTape: low-cost touch sensing on curved surfaces

TactileTape is a one-dimensional touch sensor that looks and behaves like regular tape. It can be constructed from everyday materials (a pencil, tin foil, and shelf liner) and senses single-touch input on curved and deformable surfaces. It is used as a roll of touch sensitive material from which designers cut pieces to quickly add touch sensitive strips to physical prototypes. TactileTape is low-cost, easy to interface, and, unlike current non-planar touch solutions [2,7,11], it is better adapted for the rapid exploration and iteration in the early design stage.

Fly: an organic presentation tool

In this paper, we present Fly, a prototype presentation system that adds a visual structure to presentations. Current presentation software, like PowerPoint, structure slides in a linear sequence. The Fly design introduces a spatial organization that is based on Mind Maps. Using colour associations, spatial relations, and fluid movement, we show how presentation software can structure a meaningful overview of the underlying content.

Sensing touch using resistive graphs

In early design, instrumenting an object with touch sensing capability, especially one with complex surface geometry, can be problematic. In this paper, we show how resistive graph patterns--or resigraphs--can be used to quickly fabricate multi-touch sensors tailored to an objects shape. In very early ideation, resigraphs can be drawn using conductive ink. In later refinements they can be silk-screened or laser cut from off-the-shelf materials. A resigraph uses a commonly available microprocessor (e.g. Arduino), re-quires only three wires, and enables touch input on non-planar and non-developable surfaces.

SketchSpace: designing interactive behaviors with passive materials

This paper presents SketchSpace, a system that allows designers to interactively sketch [3] devices interactive behaviors by imbuing digital functionality to passive materials. SketchSpace requires no augmentation of the device itself, but instead it uses a depth-sensing Kinect camera to simulate the use of hardware sensors by using depth information to infer an objects three-dimensional position, motion, proximity, shape, deformations, and touch events on its surface. A designer can map these inputs to desktop applications in real-time and thus experiment with different interactions. We showcase how SketchSpace can be used to prototype two devices: from tilt sensitive mice to bendable displays. In general, we discuss how this simplifies the process of generating an interactive device sketch and supports rapid exploration of design solutions.

Gazetop: interaction techniques for gaze-aware tabletops

GazeTop is a tabletop system that tracks multi-user eye movement in a co-located setting. Knowledge of eye movement is highly relevant to tabletop interaction: eyes can point to distant targets on large tables, address usability issues imposed by rotation sensitive objects, such as menu and text, and facilitate new types of multimodal interactions. This research will evaluate a set of novel eye-controlled interactions and explore the design space of gaze-aware tabletop systems.

Attentive display: paintings as attentive user interfaces

In this paper we present ECS Display, a large plasma screen that tracks the users point of gaze from a distance, without any calibration. We discuss how we applied ECS Display in the design of Attentive Art. Artworks displayed on the ECS Display respond directly to user interest by visually highlighting areas of the artwork that receive attention, and by darkening areas that receive little interest. This results in an increasingly abstract artwork that provides guidance to subsequent viewers. We believe such attentive information visualization may be applied more generally to large screen display interactions. The filtering of information on the basis of user interest allows cognitive load associated with large display visualizations to be managed dynamically.