Helder Pinto

Beyond interaction: tools and practices for situated publication in display networks

The ability to engage users in content generation is both a major goal and a major challenge for public displays. While previous work has extensively explored the specific challenges associated with interaction processes, little attention has been paid to the broad range of issues that go beyond interaction itself. More specifically, public display systems do not seem to offer a set of tools and techniques that people may feel comfortable to use for whatever communication purposes they might have. There are no publication concepts that can frame expectations on how content creation, distribution, presentation and curation are handled by display systems. In our research, we seek to explore new publication concepts for public displays, and for that purpose we have developed instant places, a platform enabling people to connect with the places they visit and control the projection of their identity in public displays. The system frames interaction events within two specific publication concepts: pin badges and posters. We describe our first deployments at three different locations and the results obtained from usage data and in-situ surveys about content publication practices.

An Interaction Model and Infrastructure for Localized Activities in Pervasive Computing Environments

This paper presents an interaction model for pervasive computing environments supporting localized activities, i.e., activities strongly associated to a specific physical environment. We are particularly interested in activities performed by occasional visitors to public spaces. This interaction model is characterized by an activity-centered approach to pervasive computing and is defined in a conceptual model inspired by activity theory. ActivitySpot, a software infrastructure implementing this conceptual model, is also presented. User interaction in ActivitySpot is based on simple, everyday pervasive computing devices, which facilitates usage learning and allows for a wide user population. ActivitySpot has supported the deployment of several pervasive computing solutions for localized activities. Our conceptual model has been evaluated by user studies run at different public spaces and global results demonstrate the models suitability to the targeted type of scenario.

Development Challenges in Web Apps for Public Displays

Digital public displays can have a key role in urban ubiquitous computing infrastructures, but they have not yet managed to fill this role. A key step in that direction would be the emergence of an application model for open display networks that would enable anyone to create applications for display infrastructures. In this work, we study the development of web-based applications for public displays. We report on our experience of application development for real world public deployment and also on an experiment with external web developers to assess their ability to create such applications using our own development tools. The results show that the web-based app model can effectively be used in the context of public displays and that web developers are able to leverage upon their expertise to create this type of applications.

Pervasive location‐based systems: The fundamental challenges between vision and reality

Ideally, a pervasive location‐based system should allow mobile users to go anywhere and benefit from personalized and pro‐active services tailored for their current activity. However, existing location‐based systems are still far from this vision, as they are either aimed at very specific activities or too generic to provide real value to specific user activities. The objective of this work is to identify and characterize the most fundamental challenges involved in the design of pervasive location‐based systems. The approach is based on the idea that such challenges will correspond to the key design tradeoffs for location‐based systems. Building on what is believed to be the high‐level requirements for a truly pervasive locationbased system, this paper proposes a design space with four design dimensions: functional scope, added‐value, pro‐activity, and adaptability. After analyzing a representative set of location‐based systems under that design space, the combinations between functional scope and any of ...

MODIE 2006: modeling and designing user assistance in intelligent environments

The MODIE workshop is focused on models, principles and methodologie for the modeling and designing of user assistance in intelligent environments. One of the most interesting topics for the MobileHCI community is the question on how the complemetar paradigms of mobile computing and pervasive computing can supplement each other. How can mobile-personal and static-public devices be integrate to form Intelligent Environments, which effectively assist their users in typical activities and situations? We will invite researchers from multiple disciplines to submit short positio papers, which contribute theoretical results and practical insights in order to foster a lively discussion about key research issues.