Mobile Computing · Interaction

Bumping into street signs and other people while walking on a busy sidewalk is a common problem when people are also trying to check their email or update their Facebook status from their mobile phones. Interactive glasses have the potential to provide timely information (i.e., notifications) while still allowing people to pay attention to and keep an eye on other pedestrians on the sidewalk.

NotifEye allows a person to receive social network notifications on interactive glasses while walking on a busy street. The prototype uses a minimalistic user interface (UI) for interactive glasses to help people focus their attention on their surroundings and supports discreet interaction by using a finger rub pad to take action on incoming notifications.

Study: Mold-It

The pervasive rectangular touchscreen, which has dominated the display industry for decades is slowly giving room to a future in which devices may have any shape. For example, circular displays are already available on many smartwatches. However, little is known on the interplay between the rationale for the form factors of handheld devices and their interactive content.

We conducted two studies consisting in design sessions using modeling clay props to explore how users may interact with handheld freeform devices. We found three themes central to grasping such devices: freeform dexterity, shape features discoverability and shape adaptability. We further explored the interlink between shape dexterity, discoverabiliy and freeform shape features.

Prototype: Twisting Touch

Currently, touch is the dominant input technique for the design of interactions with rigid handheld devices. It is reasonable to predict that future flexible devices will also have touch sensitive surfaces. In this context, the following question arises: can interface deformation and touch co-exist in the same interaction cycle?

This study investigates the potential of combining, within the same interaction cycle, deformation and touch input in a handheld device. Using a flexible, input-only device connected to an external display, we compared a multitouch input technique and two hybrid deformation-plus-touch input techniques (bending and twisting the device, plus either front- or back-touch), in an image-docking task.

Prototype: Tilt Displays

We present a new type of actuatable display, called Tilt Displays, that provide visual feedback combined with multi-axis tilting and vertical actuation. Their ability to physically mutate provides users with an additional information channel that facilitates a range of new applications including collaboration and tangible entertainment while enhancing familiar applications such as terrain modelling by allowing 3D scenes to be rendered in a physical-3D manner.

Through a 3×3 handheld custom built prototype, we examine the design space around Tilt Displays, categorise output modalities and conduct two user studies. The first study examines users' initial impressions of Tilt Displays and probes potential interactions and uses. The second takes a quantitative approach to understand interaction possibilities with such displays, resulting in the production of two user-defined gesture sets: one for manipulating the surface of the Tilt Display, the second for conducting everyday interactions.

Prototype: Image Space

The increasing use of digital cameras and cameraphones has changed our behavior regarding the amount of photos we take. As a result, growing collections of photos are more difficult to understand, search and navigate. Helping people make sense of these collections and create an understanding of the world that they depict has become a challenging task.

We present the results of a two-month empirical study of geotagged mobile media content use. We equipped 20 people with ImageSpace, an Internet-based service that allows people to automatically share geotagged mobile media content captured with their cameraphones onto 2D and 3D representations of photo collections online. The service also introduces Scenes, which allow people to organize photos according to spatial and/or chronological associations.

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