Kimmo Rämö

Mobile visual interaction: enhancing local communication and collaboration with visual interactions

User interaction with applications and data is traditionally based on Menu driven, mouse or pen based user interfaces. As increasing number of mobile devices are equipped with cameras, mobile devices can be a key tool for local and remote visual interaction and communications. In this paper we discuss our Mobile Visual Interaction system that enables pointing with mobile camera devices on larger displays, and key findings in using mobile cameras for human computer interaction. The mobile pointing software can identify and interpret camera-detectable data elements inserted on data surfaces such as computer displays or projected screens. The user can interact with this system by pointing the mobile camera device to the surface and performing gestures. In this article we share the key challenges and key results found during developing the system.

Active notes: context-sensitive notes for mobile devices

Modern knowledge workers utilize digital computing platforms to create and consume digital media as part of their daily routines, using tools such as: Email, Messaging (SMS, IM), Audio podcasts, imaging, etc. As mobility is central in nature for mobile workers, the mobile computing platforms such as smart phones play an important role to consume and capture information into digital media. There are several available technology enablers in current mobile devices which help creation of Text, Audio, Video, Images and PIM application data, such as contacts, calendar events etc. These enablers are typically independent set of applications to help utilize different media types in different applications such as note taking tools. In this research we developed a research prototype of an application that helps user to make notes with a unified interface to create and maintain multimedia notes. We investigated particularly the act of note taking by mobile workers and the different usage patterns of notes in work environment covering both during and after they have been created. We studied different sets of users for their note taking practices. On identifying the key challenges posed by user interactions and the gaps posed in current solutions we devised and developed the Active Notes prototype. Active Notes an interactive and dynamic behavior provides to user created notes, responding to specific contextual events that occur in user communications. We will discuss our research approaches on how we identified the required features in our research prototype of Active Notes. We will elaborate the basis which supports the need for the rich functionality developed along with system level details on how we implemented this. We will discuss some of the features with the help of few application screen shorts to depict the effect of the features.