Simon Olberding

PrintScreen: fabricating highly customizable thin-film touch-displays

PrintScreen is an enabling technology for digital fabrication of customized flexible displays using thin-film electroluminescence (TFEL). It enables inexpensive and rapid fabrication of highly customized displays in low volume, in a simple lab environment, print shop or even at home. We show how to print ultra-thin (120 µm) segmented and passive matrix displays in greyscale or multi-color on a variety of deformable and rigid substrate materials, including PET film, office paper, leather, metal, stone, and wood. The displays can have custom, unconventional 2D shapes and can be bent, rolled and folded to create 3D shapes. We contribute a systematic overview of graphical display primitives for customized displays and show how to integrate them with static print and printed electronics. Furthermore, we contribute a sensing framework, which leverages the display itself for touch sensing. To demonstrate the wide applicability of PrintScreen, we present application examples from ubiquitous, mobile and wearable computing.

A cuttable multi-touch sensor

We propose cutting as a novel paradigm for ad-hoc customization of printed electronic components. As a first instantiation, we contribute a printed capacitive multi-touch sensor, which can be cut by the end-user to modify its size and shape. This very direct manipulation allows the end-user to easily make real-world objects and surfaces touch-interactive, to augment physical prototypes and to enhance paper craft. We contribute a set of technical principles for the design of printable circuitry that makes the sensor more robust against cuts, damages and removed areas. This includes novel physical topologies and printed forward error correction. A technical evaluation compares different topologies and shows that the sensor remains functional when cut to a different shape.

Foldio: Digital Fabrication of Interactive and Shape-Changing Objects With Foldable Printed Electronics

Foldios are foldable interactive objects with embedded input sensing and output capabilities. Foldios combine the advantages of folding for thin, lightweight and shape-changing objects with the strengths of thin-film printed electronics for embedded sensing and output. To enable designers and end-users to create highly custom interactive foldable objects, we contribute a new design and fabrication approach. It makes it possible to design the foldable object in a standard 3D environment and to easily add interactive high-level controls, eliminating the need to manually design a fold pattern and low-level circuits for printed electronics. Second, we contribute a set of printable user interface controls for touch input and display output on folded objects. Moreover, we contribute controls for sensing and actuation of shape-changeable objects. We demonstrate the versatility of the approach with a variety of interactive objects that have been fabricated with this framework.

AugmentedForearm: exploring the design space of a display-enhanced forearm

Recent technical advances allow traditional wristwatches to be equipped with high processing power. Not only do they allow for glancing at the time, but they also allow users to interact with digital information. However, the display space is very limited. Extending the screen to cover the entire forearm is promising. It allows the display to be worn similarly to a wristwatch while providing a large display surface. In this paper we present the design space of a display-augmented forearm, focusing on two specific properties of the forearm: its hybrid nature as a private and a public display surface and the way clothing influences information display. We show a wearable prototypical implementation along with interactions that instantiate the design space: sleeve-store, sleeve-zoom, public forearm display and interactive tattoo.

Building Functional Prototypes Using Conductive Inkjet Printing

The recently developed conductive inkjet printing process enables conductive circuits to be created quickly, cheaply, and easily using a consumer-grade inkjet printer. In its basic form, the technique supports a single layer of wiring on a flexible substrate. This can be a valuable tool for pervasive computing research because it allows simple electronic circuits and devices to be built and iterated quickly, in an analogous manner to the use of 3D printers for prototyping mechanical structures. It is possible to rapidly create touch- and proximity-sensitive surfaces, to cut and fold the printed conductive patterns, and to augment them with off-the-shelf electronic components and custom-made subcircuits. The authors present the possibilities enabled by conductive inkjet printing, bringing together their previously published results and presenting their latest insights and findings. They consider these printing and fabrication techniques as a suite of tools for researchers and practitioners who wish to fabricate a variety of functional device prototypes. They aim to enable others to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and applicability of conductive inkjet printing across a range of pervasive computing applications. This article is part of a special issue on printing and fabrication.

Microanalysis of active reading behavior to inform design of interactive desktop workspaces

Hybrid paper-digital desktop workspaces have long been of interest in HCI, yet their design remains challenging. One continuing challenge is to support fluid interaction with both paper and digital media, while taking advantage of established practices with each. Today researchers are exploiting depth cameras and computer vision to capture activity on and above the desktop and enable direct interaction with digitally projected and physical media. One important prerequisite to augmenting desktop activity is understanding human behavior in particular contexts and tasks. Here we study active reading on the desktop. To better understand active reading practices and identify patterns that might serve as signatures for different types of related activity, we conducted a microanalysis of single users reading on and above the desktop workspace. We describe the relationship between multimodal body-based contextual cues and the interactions they signify in a physical desktop workspace. Detailed analysis of coordinated interactions with paper documents provides an empirical basis for designing digitally augmented desktop workspaces. We conclude with prototype design interactions for hybrid paper-digital desktop workspaces.

CoStream: in-situ co-construction of shared experiences through mobile video sharing during live events

Mobile live video broadcasting has become increasingly popular as means for novel social media interactions. Recent research mainly focused on bridging larger physical distances in large-scale events such as car racing, where participants are unable to spectate from a certain location in the event. In this paper, we advocate using live video streams not only over larger distances, but also in-situ in closed events such as soccer matches or concerts. We present CoStream, a mobile live video sharing system and present its iterative design process. We used CoStream as an instrument in a field study to investigate the in-situ co-construction of shared experiences during live events. We contribute our findings and outline future work.

PLink: paper-based links for cross-media information spaces

PLink is a system for integrating physical and computer desktops by creating paper links to digital resources. PLink leverages diverse formats of physical paper, ranging from tiny stickers that can be easily incorporated into traditional paper media to very large deskpad sheets that make the physical desktop partially interactive. We present PLink and initial results from a multi-week field study.

CloudDrops: Stamp-sized Pervasive Displays for Situated Awareness of Web-based Information

CloudDrops is a pervasive awareness platform that integrates virtual information from the Web more closely with the contextually rich physical spaces in which we live and work. CloudDrops consists of many interactive stamp-sized displays, each showing a tiny bit of digital information. The large number of displays and their small size allows the user to flexibly instrument, orchestrate and reconfigure her personal information environment. We show different form factors for stamp-sized displays, provide a device concept and a first implementation. We propose lightweight visualizations and interaction techniques that are tailored to the tiny device form factor. Moreover, we contribute techniques for associating these small displays with content that the user wants to stay aware of, including Web pages, contacts, and places. To demonstrate the capabilities of the platform, we present several application examples. A user study provides first insights into how CloudDrops enable users to create a personalized information environment by distributing stamp-sized displays over the entire architectural space.

Browsing E-Lecture Libraries on Mobile Devices: A Spatial Interaction Concept

Increasingly powerful mobile devices like the Apple iPhone empower learners to watch e-lectures not only at home but also in mobile learning scenarios virtually anywhere and anytime. However, state of the art mobile video browsers do not support learners in getting an overview on and navigating between the large amounts of semantically related e-lectures, which are available in various digital libraries. We contribute a novel user interface for the mobile use of e-lectures. Leveraging a spatial navigation metaphor, it supports both linear and nonlinear interaction within a single lecture, as well as the efficient navigation within large e-lecture libraries. Evaluation results show that our e-lecture browser significantly improves the learning process and leads to significantly higher efficiency and user satisfaction.