Itiro Siio

UbiComp 2004: Ubiquitous Computing

This paper addresses users’ experiences with an ambient display for the home. We present the design and in situ evaluation of the CareNet Display, an ambient display that helps the local members of an elder’s care network provide her day-to-day care. We describe the CareNet Display’s design and discuss results of a series of in home deployments with users. We report how the CareNet Display was used and its impact on elders and their care network members. Based on our findings, we offer lessons about how ambient display technologies could be improved to further benefit this growing user community.

Peek-a-drawer: communication by furniture

Peek-A-Drawer is a new communication device that uses furniture to support lightweight communication between people. It provides virtual shared drawers that connect family members who are located at a distance. When a user puts something in the upper drawer and closes it, a photograph is taken automatically and the image appears in the lower drawer at a distant place. The operation is as simple as using a drawer, allowing even children to communicate with their grandparents. As the camera only takes pictures of objects inside the drawer, privacy is assured.

Real-world interaction using the FieldMouse

We introduce an inexpensive position input device called the FieldMouse, with which a computer can tell the position of the device on paper or any flat surface without using special input tablets or position detection devices. A FieldMouse is a combination of an ID recognizer like a barcode reader and a mouse which detects relative movement of the device. Using a FieldMouse, a user first detects an ID on paper by using the barcode reader, and then drags it from the ID using the mouse. If the location of the ID is known, the location of the dragged FieldMouse can also be calculated by adding the amount of movement from the ID to the position of the FieldMouse. Using a FieldMouse in this way, any flat surface can work as a pointing device that supports absolute position input, just by putting an ID tag somewhere on the surface. A FieldMouse can also be used for enabling a graphical user interface (GUI) on paper or on any flat surface by analyzing the direction and the amount of mouse movement after detecting an ID. In this paper, we introduce how a FieldMouse can be used in various situations to enable computing in real-world environments.

Making recipes in the kitchen of the future

INTRODUCTION A kitchen is not just a place of labor. Throughout history, the activity of preparing food has been accompanied (and even used as an excuse for) social interaction and the development of social bonds. Modern lifestyles and convenience foods have reduced the time and effort required for cooking, but at the same time, have lessened the opportunities for interaction. Our contribution is to demonstrate how a “Kitchen of the Future” can use technology to re-introduce such social interactions, and also enable entirely novel forms of communication mediated by computer. Our kitchen supports the automatic generation of web-ready recipe pages, with other possible applications including actual cooking assistance, and communication or education across distances, cultures and generations.

Real-World Graphical User Interfaces

Although the age of information appliances is getting close, current remote control devices are too awkward, and we cannot control sophisticated equipments without using graphical computer terminals. We propose a new interaction technique called the Real-world GUI, where users can control real-world appliances just like performing GUI operations on graphical computer terminals, using a new input device called the FieldMouse. FieldMouse is a device which consists of an ID recognizer and a motion sensing device. Using a FieldMouse, various GUI tools like buttons, menus, sliders, and others can be used on any surface and objects, just like using a mouse on a desktop computer. Users can control or program various information appliances as easily as performing GUI operations on graphical computer terminals.

MouseField: A Simple and Versatile Input Device for Ubiquitous Computing

Although various interaction technologies for handling information in the ubiquitous computing environment have been proposed, some techniques are too simple for performing rich interaction, and others require special expensive equipments to be installed everywhere, and cannot soon be available in our everyday environment. We propose a new simple and versatile input device called the MouseField that enables users to control various information appliances easily without huge amount of cost.

Persuasive technology to improve eating behavior using a sensor-embedded fork

This paper describes the design of a digital fork and a mobile interactive and persuasive game for a young child who is a picky eater and/or easily distracted during mealtime. The system employs Ubicomp technology to educate children on the importance of a balanced diet while motivating proper eating behavior. To sense a childs eating behavior, we have designed and prototyped a sensor-embedded digital fork, called the Sensing Fork. Furthermore, we have developed a story-book and persuasive game, called the Hungry Panda, on a smartphone. This capitalizes on the capabilities of the Sensing Fork to interact with and modify childrens eating behavior during mealtime. We report the results of a real-life study that involves mother-child subjects and tested the effectiveness of the Sensing Fork and Hungry Panda game in addressing childrens eating problems. Our findings exhibit positive effects for changing childrens eating behavior.

Complete fashion coordinator: a support system for capturing and selecting daily clothes with social networks

For some people, selecting the clothes you wear is sometimes tedious, difficult and requires you to remember what you have previously worn. While there are many fashion SNS (Social Networking Services) sites and related research devoted to addressing certain aspects of this issue, there is no system that combines both the automated cataloguing of ones own clothes with near real-time recommendation by their social network. In this paper, we propose a novel system which allows users to easily organize and optimize their daily clothing selection based on historical data. By combining historical information about what the user has worn with several options such as the users planned activities and the weather, it can help the user in coordinating what to wear. In order to simplify and automate the capture, storage and cataloging of image of the users clothing, we propose a system which allows for the automatic and standardized capturing of a persons clothes by simply hanging an item on a hook built into a cabinet. Furthermore, by utilizing the internet and common SNS sites, it allows friends, family living apart and/or romantic couples to seamlessly share the catalogued photos of their clothes, initiate conversation and help select what is appropriate to wear.

Sensing fork: eating behavior detection utensil and mobile persuasive game

We propose a fork-type sensing device, Sensing Fork, which detects childrens eating behavior (eating actions and chosen food) and a smartphone game to address childrens eating problems. This paper describes the design and implementation of the Sensing Fork prototype and the play-based eating game called Hungry Panda.

Kitchen of the future and applications

A kitchen is a place where food is prepared and education and communication activities relating to food are carried out. As it is a place that witnesses more activity when compared to the other parts of the house, there are many potential ubiquitous computing applications that can be installed in a kitchen. We are developing a computer-augmented kitchen environment, the Kitchen of the Future, that incorporates various computing elements into a standard kitchen unit. In this paper, we describe an overview of the Kitchen of the Future system and three applications, that is, recording and replaying of a cooking process, videoconferencing cooking instructions, and interactive cooking navigation.