Rich Gold

Liveboard: a large interactive display supporting group meetings, presentations, and remote collaboration

This paper describes the Liveboard, a large interactive display system. With nearly one million pixels and an accurate, multi-state, cordless pen, the Liveboard provides a basis for research on user interfaces for group meetings, presentations and remote collaboration. We describe the underlying hardware and software of the Liveboard, along with several software applications that have been developed. In describing the system, we point out the design rationale that was used to make various choices. We present the results of an informal survey of Liveboard users, and describe some of the improvements that have been made in response to user feedback. We conclude with several general observations about the use of large public interactive displays.

An overview of the PARCTAB ubiquitous computing experiment

The PARCTAB system integrates a palm-sized mobile computer into an office network. The PARCTAB project serves as a preliminary testbed for ubiquitous computing, a philosophy originating at Xerox PARC that aims to enrich our computing environment by emphasizing context sensitivity, casual interaction and the spatial arrangement of computers. This article describes the ubiquitous computing philosophy, the PARCTAB system, user interface issues for small devices, and our experience in developing and testing a variety of mobile applications.

The origins of ubiquitous computing research at PARC in the late 1980s

Ubiquitous computing began in the Electronics and Imaging Laboratory of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. This essay tells the inside story of its evolution from “computer walls” to “calm computing.”

The PARCTAB mobile computing system

The PARCTAB is a personal digital assistant (PDA) that communicates via infrared (IR) datapackets to a network of IR transceivers. The infrared network is designed for in-building use, where each room becomes a communication cell. In contrast to the approach used by other PDAs, most PARCTAB applications run on remote hosts and therefore depend on reliable communication through the IR network. The infrastructure provides reliability as well as uninterrupted service when a PARCTAB moves from cell to cell. The PARCTAB and a supporting infrastructure has been operational since March 1993 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. The system currently comprises thirty cells and twenty-five PARCTABs and will expand in the near future. There are three types of software components in the PARCTAB system: gateways, agents, and applications. Gateways implement a datagram service for sending and receiving packets using IR signals. Each tab is represented by an agent. An agent tracks the location of its tab and provides location independent reliable remote procedure calls. The protocols enforce security, preventing, for example, an unauthorized application from taking control of a tab.<<ETX>>

The Parctab Ubiquitous Computing Experiment

The ParcTab system integrates a palm-sized mobile computer into an office network. This project serves as a preliminary testbed for Ubiquitous Computing, a philosophy originating at Xerox PARC that aims to enrich our computing environment by emphasizing context sensitivity, casual interaction and the spatial arrangement of computers. This paper describes the Ubiquitous Computing philosophy, the ParcTab system, user-interface issues for small devices, and our experience developing and testing a variety of mobile applications.

Back to the real world

OMPUTER-AUGMENTED , / ENVIRONMENTS: J We live in a complex world, ftlled with myriad objects, tools, toys, and people. / k Our lives are spent in diverse interaction with this environment. Yet, for the most part, our computing takes place sitting in front of, and staring at, a single glowing screen attached to an array of buttons and a mouse. Our different tasks are assigned to homogeneous overlapping windows. From the isolation of our workstations we try to interact with our surrounding environment, but the two worlds have little in common. How can we escape from the computer screen and bring these two worlds together?

Listen reader: an electronically augmented paper-based book

While predictions abound that electronic books will supplant traditional paper-based books, many people bemoan the coming loss of the book as cultural artifact. In this project we deliberately keep the affordances of paper books while adding electronic augmentation. The Listen Reader combines the look and feel of a real book - a beautiful binding, paper pages and printed images and text - with the rich, evocative quality of a movie soundtrack. The books multi-layered interactive soundtrack consists of music and sound effects. Electric field sensors located in the book binding sense the proximity of the readers hands and control audio parameters, while RFID tags embedded in each page allow fast, robust page identification. Three different Listen Readers were built as part of a six-month museum exhibit, with more than 350,000 visitors. This paper discusses design, implementation, and lessons learned through the iterative design process, observation, and visitor interviews.

What HCI designers can learn from video game designers

Computer users have tasks they need to perform, and are therefore motivated to overcome poorly designed interfaces. With video games, there is no external motivation for the task — if the game’s interface is not compelling and entertaining, the product fails in the marketplace. Many aspects of game design, such as an attractor mode to draw users toward the game, have direct relevance to other domains, such as information kiosks. This panel will consist of video game designers who will relate their design methodologies, techniques, and other experiences which will help HCI designers create more compelling, engaging, and effective interfaces. The panel will consist of panelists’ presentations followed by a large allocation of time for interaction with the audience’s questions. The panelists’ presentations will include demonstration examples drawn from coin-operated and computer-based games.

Design: the what of XFR: eXperiments in the future of reading

Step up to the joystick on the exhibit to the right. A cartoon image of a young boy is projected on the screen. Kids crowd in around you as you read about Henry and his world. (See Figure 1.) There is a world of cartoon images. Lines trail off to small drawings falling away as though seen through a fisheye. As you push the joystick, another image of Henry rolls into view along one of the lines, and a comic-book dialog bubble appears. The story Henry tells is of the things in his imagination and his everyday world. One image leads to the next and then to the next. Over to the left of Henry is a sort of work bench with a touch-screen workstation sitting on it. No pictures on the screen this time, just a title (“Harry the Ape”) and a long paragraph of text. The story is about the creatures that live in Harry’s fur. Sprinkled around A Glimpse of XFR

The SIT book: audio as affective imagery for interactive storybooks

We describe a working prototype built as part of our continuing research focus on new document genres and the crossmodal affordances of interactive audio. Our experimental SIT (Sound-Image-Text) Book is a personal interactive reading experience that combines the look and feel of a real book -- a beautiful cover, paper pages and printed images and text -- with the rich, evocative quality of a movie soundtrack. The soundtrack is multi-track and includes music and sound effects. The SIT Book uses electric field sensors located in the book binding to sense the readers casual book handling and fingering of the page; these sensors control the ambient audio. The particular point of the SIT Book is to explore the use of background sound to provide a sense of place, and to add affectto the experience of reading a book without interrupting the flow of the story.