Woohun Lee

Inflatable mouse: volume-adjustable mouse with air-pressure-sensitive input and haptic feedback

Inflatable Mouse is a volume-adjustable user interface. It can be inflated up to the volume of a familiar mouse, but be deflated and stored flat in a PC card slot of a laptop computer when not in use. Inflatable Mouse functions just like a typical mouse; moreover, it provides new interaction techniques by sensing the air pressure in the balloon of the mouse. It also addresses some issues associated with pressure-sensing interactions such as the lack of bi-directional input and the lack of effective feedback. Moreover, it can be used as both a control tool and a display tool. In this paper, the design of an Inflatable Mouse prototype is described and potential application scenarios such as zooming in/out and fast scrolling using pressure control are explained. We also discuss the potential use of Inflatable Mouse as an emotional communication tool.

RemoteTouch: touch-screen-like interaction in the tv viewing environment

We explored the possibility of touch-screen-like interaction with a remote control in the TV-viewing environment. A shadow representing the users thumb touches the screen, presses a button, flicks a cover-flow list, and draws a simple stroke, while the thumb stays and moves on and above the touchpad. In order to implement the concept we developed an optical touchpad for tracking the thumb hovering over its surface, and designed a TV application to demonstrate possible new interaction styles. Throughout two iterations of prototyping, we corrected some of our false expectations, and also verified its potential as a viable option for a TV remote control. This paper presents technical issues and requirements for the hover-tracking touchpad and a complete report of our user studies to explore touch-screen-like interaction for the TV.

Integrating hardware and software: augmented reality based prototyping method for digital products

For digital products, the relationship between the hardware and the software is important but their integration is largely achieved in the later phase of the design process. This paper presents new prototyping methods that allow digital product designers to effectively integrate the hardware and the software of the products from the early phase of the design process. The integration is accomplished by accurately overlaying a virtual display onto a quickly made functional hardware prototype using two augmented reality techniques; 1) using a video see through HMD and 2) using video projection. The results of the preliminary evaluation suggest that the early integrated prototypes are effective for design development and user studies.

TapBoard: making a touch screen keyboard more touchable

We propose the TapBoard, a touch screen software keyboard that regards tapping actions as keystrokes, and other touches as touched states. In a series of user studies, we could validate the effectiveness of the TapBoard concept. First, we could show that tapping to type is in fact compatible with the existing typing skill of most touch screen keyboard users. Second, users could soon adapt to the TapBoard and learn to rest their fingers in a touched state. Finally, we confirm by a controlled experiment that there is no difference in the text entry performance between the TapBoard and a traditional touch screen software keyboard. In addition to these experimental results, we demonstrate a few new interaction techniques that will be made possible by the TapBoard.

The effect of eco-driving system towards sustainable driving behavior

In this paper, we explore the use of an Eco-Driving System to see how the system promotes greener driving behavior. We conducted both an online survey (N=60) and a user test (N=14) to study the Eco-Driving System. Based on participant responses, we found that the current Eco-Driving System shows minor benefits in gas mileage due to different driving behaviors and also increased task loads for our participants. Therefore, we suggest a new research direction for the Eco-Driving System for further study.

One-key keyboard: a very small QWERTY keyboard supporting text entry for wearable computing

Most of the commercialized wearable text input devices are wrist-worn keyboards that have adopted the minimization method of reducing keys. Generally, a drastic key reduction in order to achieve sufficient wearability increases KSPC (Keystrokes per Character), decreases text entry performance, and requires additional effort to learn a new typing method. We are faced with wearability-usability tradeoff problems in designing a good wearable keyboard. To address this problem, we adopted a new keyboard minimization method of reducing key pitch and have developed the One-key Keyboard. The traditional desktop keyboard has one key per character, but One-key Keyboard has only one key (70mmX35mm) on which a 10*5 QWERTY key array is printed. One-key Keyboard detects the position of the fingertip at the time of the keying event and figures out the character entered. We conducted a text entry performance test comprised of 5 sessions. The participants typed 18.9WPM with a 6.7% error rate over all sessions and achieved up to 24.5WPM. From the experiments results, the One-key Keyboard was evaluated as a potential text input device for wearable computing, balancing wearability, social acceptance, input speed, and learnability.

Shade Pixel

As a result of the rapid increase in the number of information sources, humans interact with numerous visual displays every day. However, the excessive use of traditional light emissive displays leads to unwanted visual noise. Therefore, intended or not, people are exposed to visual noise in their everyday environments. Ambient displays are one form of solution to mitigate this problem. Ambient displays embedded in everyday objects or in the environment deliver peripheral information in subtle ways that do not divert the focus of users’ attention. On the other hand, designers are concentrating on developing displays that provide new and enjoyable user experiences. Their approaches include aesthetics in data visualization, the exploration of interesting materials and movement of physical pixels in ways that are not considered in typical displays. Physical displays or materialized pixels, such as mechanical mirrors [Rozin 2007], as well as those known as Eavesdripping [Pohflepp 2005], the PingPongPixel [Breejen et al. 2005] are good examples.

CUBEMENT: democratizing mechanical movement design

This paper presents a set of cubes for modular design that act as a meaningful trial for the democratization of design and manufacturing. Called CUBEMENT, the cubes are compatible with existing building platforms such as LEGO Technics, and physical computing components. CUBEMENT consists of a power supply and components for mechanism building that can support other cubes or extend to physical computing. CUBEMENT components can be connected and interlocked with one another by simply snapping together small magnets. The aim of CUBEMENT is to create a seed movement, expand the application of structural mechanisms further, and control that movement by embracing other platforms within its platform. Therefore, it will be able to simultaneously support the sketching of movement from mechanism building and physical computing. CUBEMENT also plays a role as a tangible communication medium for intangible mechanism movement.

Transwall: a transparent double-sided touch display facilitating co-located face-to-face interactions

Today, transparent display technologies are becoming quite ubiquitous. However, until now, transparent displays have been used from only one side of the display in limited application areas. In this paper, we propose TransWall, a transparent display that can be used from both sides in order for people to experience co-located, face-to-face interactions. We describe the properties and new interaction design factors, and explore the possible scenarios that may emerge from them.

MoleBot: mole in a table

What would it be like to have a mole live under your table and push around objects on the table surface? We have developed MoleBot, a robotic mole living in a coffee table that interacts with small items laid on the table surface. The MoleBot projects a molehill on the surface, which moves simultaneously with the movement of the MoleBot. In order to make the molehill move with fluidity, the table surface needs to be rigid yet flexible. Various techniques used in shape display and organic user interfaces of previous projects (Feelex, Pop Up!, Lumen1, Relief2, and HypoSurface) were assessed to determine the feasibility of the molehill idea. The projects adopted servo motors, shape memory alloys, electric slide potentiometers, and pneumatic actuators. However, in generating the MoleBot, these techniques were unable to concurrently provide the necessary speed of actuation, resolution, and pixel size for desired level of physical interactivity with objects on the surface. As a result, we conceived a new way to implement this concept.