Proposal

Title:
Visualization of and Interaction with digital devices around large surfaces as a function of Proximity
Supervisor:
-          Nicolai Marquardt (University of Calgary)
-          Prof. Dr. Saul Greenberg (University of Calgary)
-          Prof. Dr. Andreas Butz (University of Munich)
Proposal:
People increasingly use personal and shared electronic devices in a variety of everyday situations. Examples for personal devices include mobile phones and media players, digital cameras, and tablet computers, whereas shared devices are for instance large interactive displays or TV sets at home. Currently, even though these devices are often connected over a network, almost all are unaware of other devices that are nearby. A few research systems do recognize nearby devices in either very specific or somewhat crude ways  [1],[2]. As with that work, we want to explore interaction techniques and visualizations that illustrate how one device can connect, reveal information and allow information exchange with other devices as a function of proximity. Unlike this existing work, we will investigate fine-grained proximity information and use that to continually change what the interface shows and how users can explore and trigger information exchange between devices.
More precisely I consider an extended notion of proximity that takes four dimensions into account. Those are position and orientation between different devices and people in a room and identity and movement of entities. I will look at proximal relations of devices like a media player, digital camera or tablet computer and people around a large vertical display.
One focus of this work will be to explore the different proximity dependent visualization possibilities of entities and their content on large vertical display and if applicable on a device screen. How can the visualization create awareness and reveal additional content? Does it therefore change continuously or in discrete steps and what content is shown on which screen?
A second focus is to examine the interaction concept when using devices around a large display. How does the extended notion of Proximity determine different functions of a device and in which way can a person interact on the device or on the display. How do interaction possibilities change depending on their proximity.
As a possible extension of this work I might explore how multiple people with multiple devices can use the system, exchange information and work collaboratively. How can proximal cues be interpreted and how can the system react to better support those tasks?
An example application that demonstrates these concepts will probably start with having picture managing abilities. This might extend to a more sophisticated application design, which is capable of managing multiple types of media. So the application can support people`s everyday interaction with the digital world both in a home environment setting or in a computer supported collaborative work scenario. The technical implementation of this application will use the proximity toolkit framework [3]. Tracking of people and devices will mainly be done by Vicon motion tracking cameras but with the open distributed architecture of the toolkit it might be possible to use technologies like RFID or Infrared sensors in simple examples. The network communication between the large display and other devices will use the .NetwokingGT toolkit [4].
References:
[1]   C. Kray, M. Rohs, J. Hook, and S. Kratz, “Group coordination and negotiation through spatial proximity regions around mobile devices on augmented Tabletops.”
[2]   H. Gellersen, C. Fischer, D. Guinard, R. Gostner, G. Kortuem, C. Kray, E. Rukzio, and S. Streng, “Supporting device discovery and spontaneous interaction with spatial references,” Personal Ubiquitous Comput.,  vol. 13, 2009, pp. 255-264.
[3]   R. Diaz-Marino and S. Greenberg, “The proximity toolkit and ViconFace: the video,” Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems,  Atlanta, Georgia, USA: ACM, 2010, pp. 4793-4798.
[4]   B.D. Alwis, C. Gutwin, and S. Greenberg, “GT/SD: performance and simplicity in a groupware toolkit,” Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI symposium on Engineering interactive computing systems,  Pittsburgh, PA, USA: ACM, 2009, pp. 265-274.

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