Nadine Couture

The Revealing Flashlight: Interactive Spatial Augmented Reality for Detail Exploration of Cultural Heritage Artifacts

Cultural heritage artifacts often contain details that are difficult to distinguish due to aging effects such as erosion. We propose the revealing flashlight, a new interaction and visualization technique in spatial augmented reality that helps to reveal the detail of such artifacts. We locally and interactively augment a physical artifact by projecting an expressive 3D visualization that highlights its features, based on an analysis of its previously acquired geometry at multiple scales. Our novel interaction technique simulates and improves the behavior of a flashlight: according to 6-degree-of-freedom input, we adjust the numerous parameters involved in the expressive visualization—in addition to specifying the location to be augmented. This makes advanced 3D analysis accessible to the greater public with an everyday gesture, by naturally combining the inspection of the real object and the virtual object in a colocated interaction and visualization space. The revealing flashlight can be used by archeologists, for example, to help decipher inscriptions in eroded stones, or by museums to let visitors interactively discover the geometric details and meta-information of cultural artifacts. We confirm its effectiveness, ease of use, and ease of learning in an initial preliminary user study and by the feedback of two public exhibitions.

Internet of Tangibles: Exploring the Interaction-Attention Continuum

There is an increasing interest in the HCI research community to design richer user interactions with the Internet of Things (IoT). This studio will allow exploring the design of tangible interaction with the IoT, what we call Internet of Tangibles. In particular, we aim at investigating the full interaction-attention continuum, with the purpose of designing IoT tangible interfaces that can switch between peripheral interactions that do not disrupt everyday routines, and focused interactions that support users reflections. This investigation will be conducted through hands-on activities where participants will prototype tangible IoT objects, starting by a paper prototyping phase, supported by design cards, and followed by an Arduino prototype phase. The purpose of the studio is also establishing a community of researchers and practitioners, from both academy and industry, interested in the field of tangible interaction with the Internet of Things.

Designing an Expandable Illuminated Ring to Build an Actuated Ring Chart

Data physicalizations are growing popular in many societal domains which indicates a strong potential for fostering public engagement thanks to public exhibition (e.g. in train stations, in airports, on roundabouts, and in enterprises). We focus on dynamic physical charts for visualizing renewable energy forecasts in public spaces. To get charts readable from any point of view around, we propose a physical ring chart inspired by stone cairns. To build this physical chart, we designed an expandable and stackable illuminated ring. In this paper, we describe the design process and the limitations of the first prototype of such a ring.

The multisensory interactive window: immersive experiences for the elderly

This paper presents the Multisensory Interactive Window, a system that allows experiencing distant places and communicating with distant people through a tangible installation that exploits the window metaphor and multisensory feedback. Thanks to the feeling of being just in front of a natural landscape or a room inhabited by a beloved person, we strive to enhance the older adults well-being at home. We illustrate two interaction concepts and a feasibility study for the implementation of the first prototype.

Towards bi-manual 3D painting: generating virtual shapes with hands

We aim at combining surface generation by hands with 3D painting in a large space, from 10 to ~200 m2 (for a stage setup). Our long-term goal is to phase 3D surface generation in choreography, in order to produce augmented dance shows where the dancer can draw elements in 3D (characters, sets) while dancing. We present two systems; a first system in a CAVE environment, and second system more adapted to a stage setup. A comparison of both systems is provided, and an exploratory user experiment was performed, both with laypersons and dancers.

Designing the Interaction with the Internet of Tangible Things: A Card Set

Current interactions for the Internet of Things are often constrained behind a screen. With the Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT) we aim at promoting the design of richer interactions, embodied in physical IoT objects. To this purpose, we propose a card set for the design of tangible interaction with IoT objects, which contains 8 cards for tangible interaction properties and 8 for IoT properties, in order to explore how tangible properties can be exploited for enhancing the interaction with IoT objects. We tested the card set in a dedicated workshop, observing that participants were able to explore most of the tangible and IoT properties. To complement the IoT card set, a hardware prototyping toolkit with examples for each of the 8 tangible properties is currently under development.

Internet of Tangible Things: Workshop on Tangible Interaction with the Internet of Things

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) brings abundant new opportunities to create more effective and pleasing tangible user interfaces that capitalize on intuitive interaction in the physical world, whilst utilizing capabilities of sensed data and Internet connectivity. However, with these new opportunities come new challenges; little is still known how to best design tangible IoT interfaces that simultaneously provide engaging user experiences and foster a sense of understanding about the often-complex functionality of IoT systems. How should we map previous taxonomies and design principles for tangible interaction into the new landscape of IoT systems? This workshop will bring together a community of researchers from the fields of IoT and tangible interaction, in order to explore and discuss how parallels between tangible interaction and the properties of IoT systems can best be capitalised on as HCI research moves increasingly toward the Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT). Through ideation and discussion, the workshop will function as a springboard for the community to begin creating new taxonomies and design considerations for the emerging IoTT.

CAIRNS: an ambient tangible interface for shifting energy demand at work

In the past 10 years, interactive systems have been designed to encourage users in using energy when there is plenty of renewable energy. In this paper, we propose to shift the energy demand of laptops in the workplace. Using a tools we developed, we define instructions for helping employees in this task. In order to help employees applying these instructions, we propose to use a physical histogram for visualizing renewable energy forecasts. In result of several user studies, we converge to a circular horizontal physical histogram, interpretable by the user independently of his position around the physical histogram. Finally, we evoke the design and the study of CAIRNS, an ambient shape-changing interface using illuminated extensible disks, for representing this kind of physical histogram.

Démonstration: ArcheoTUI

We designed ArcheoTUI on the demand of archeaologists and in a direct collaboration with them. Cultural objects of archeological findings are often broken and fractured into a large amount of fragments, and the archeologists are confronted by 3D puzzles when reassembling the fractured objects. We revealed that the tangible interface was accepted, and that all the users managed to solve simple assembly tasks.