Designing for physically integrated interaction
Workshop Programme
The workshop programme, including links to papers, appears below.
Introduction
One of the key characteristics of ubiquitous computing is the integration of computation with the everyday physical world. The Segway vehicle provides an example in which microprocessor-controlled operation changes what we would normally expect to be the physics of locomotion on one axle. We have new abilities to alter physical characteristics (actuation, augmentation) as well as to accommodate or respond to them (sensing). Ubicomp seeks to combine electronic behaviour with material artefacts of many kinds, from added functionality in the case of Wellner’s digital desk, to added experience in the case of location-based media. But work on physical-virtual interweaving seems largely ad hoc: systematic knowledge of how to design for this combination is missing.
This workshop aims to provide a forum for designers, developers and users of ubiquitous systems to exchange experiences and contribute to the elucidation of research and design challenges for physical integration in ubiquitous settings. We are interested not only in the physical phenomena and experiences we can bring about, but also in their social and behavioural consequences. We welcome participants from a wide range of areas of expertise including systems, design, engineering, Physics and HCI. The final goal of the workshop is to identify and clarify research challenges and directions.
Workshop topics
Following are examples of topics suitable for the workshop. The list is not meant to be exhaustive.
- Case studies of novel physical-virtual designs. Novel physical artefacts with digital behaviour (or vice versa), including how and why their physical and virtual properties were designed with the chosen interweaving.
- Frameworks for integrated physical-virtual environments and applications. Designers could benefit from frameworks that provides reusable principles and models for incorporating physical and virtual objects and user actions into the design space. How can we best construct such a framework?
- Supporting spontaneous interaction. How can we best support physical-virtual applications that enable users to combine convenient bits and pieces in their everyday physical-virtual world in an ad-hoc fashion?
- New mechanisms for associating the physical and the virtual. We are familiar with the use of tags (e.g. RFID) and beacons (e.g. infrared) which, when read, enable an interaction with an electronic service associated with a physical entity. We are also familiar with projection and augmentation superimposed upon physical entities. What other ways are there of associating the virtual with the physical? The possibilities include: interactions that take place over a long timeframe instead of instantaneously; and new ways of using orientation or focus information to determine the available interactions.
- Interaction zones and boundaries. Interaction boundaries aren't always the same as physical boundaries – Bluetooth interactions, for example, go through walls -- or social boundaries – Bluetooth interactions can breach personal privacy. What physical phenomena should we harness to make interaction boundaries understandable? “Constrained channels” such as infrared, which is blocked by certain building materials – are one possible answer to this problem. What others are there? Another aspect is “feeling the limits” of interaction. If one interaction is via (short-range) Bluetooth and the other via (long-range) GPRS, how is the user supposed to know? How are they supposed to know in the first case that they should remain close (how close?), and in the other case that they can walk away while the interaction continues?
- Physical uncertainty and imprecision. It is well known that sensing technologies that are cheap enough for widespread deployment tend to have high error rates. In particular, technologies for location are often associated with considerable uncertainty -- e.g. they provide drifting values for the same physical point; they provide the “wrong” information (coordinates instead of places); or they don't have the requisite granularity. Several have proposed accommodating rather than hiding those properties, but what exactly are the properties, and how can we best integrate them with our notion of places – itself a social as well as physical construct?
- Learning from examples of physical integration outside ubicomp such as architectural response to information technology. How has the design of buildings and interior space accommodated the integration of new technology? What issues arise due to different update and renewal cycles for technology, furniture and buildings?
- Learning UbiPhysics. How should people learn UbiPhysics? What affordances should material things possess to show that they can engage in electronic behaviours? How should we accommodate the fact that early adopters may seem to be “behaving strangely” (getting strangely close to a poster) as opposed to exercising new capabilities (accessing its electronic counterpart with their camera phones)?
Workshop attendance, submission & participant selection
We envisage overall attendance of about 20 participants. The workshop organizers will select participants based on a review of submitted position papers, taking into account scientific quality, relation to the workshop topic, and fruitfulness for discussion. Some successful position papers will be selected for presentation. Successful position papers will be published on the web prior to the workshop.
Position papers should be submitted to timothy AT hpl.hp.com in PDF format, to arrive by midnight 22 June 2005, UK time. They should be no longer than three pages in length, in Springer LNCS format. Successful position papers will concretely address the workshop topic, preferably supported by the authors' own experience in virtual/physical interaction design. Accounts of projects without a clear, larger point on the workshop theme will be rejected. Authors will be notified by July 25, 2005.
Workshop programme
NB papers are 10 minutes presentation plus 5 minutes discussion
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9.00 - 10.00 Papers I |
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Brief introduction |
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| UbiComp: Becoming Superhuman | James Scott, Intel Research Cambridge, UK | ||
| CybStickers - Simple Shared Ubiquitous Annotations for All | Odd-Wiking Rahlff, SINTEF, Oslo, Norway | ||
| Device Design for Learning Using Place, Intuitive Behaviour and Collaboration | Cliff Randell, Eva Hornecker, Eric Harris and Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Bristol/Sussex, UK | ||
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10.00 - 10.30 Coffee Break |
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10.30 - 11.45 Papers II |
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| Asynchronous Togetherness: Social Interaction Mediated by Space, Time and Dynamics | Darren Leigh and Paul Dietz, MERL, Cambridge, USA | ||
| Towards Real World Object Orientation | Paul Holleis and Albrecht Schmidt, U. Munich, Germany | ||
| Spinner: A Haptic Reconfigurable Interface | Shigeru Kobayashi and Masayuki Akamatsu, IAMAS, Ogaki City, Japan | ||
| Pinning the Physical into the Digital | Nicolas Villar and Hnas Gellersen, Lancaster U., UK | ||
| Spatial Programming: Using the Physical World as a Computing System | Julien Pauty, Paul Couderc and Michel Banatre, INRIA, Rennes, France | ||
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11.45 - 12.30 Discussion |
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12.30 - 14.00 Lunch |
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14.00 - 15.00 Technology demonstrations (to be confirmed) |
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15.00 - 15:30 Coffee break |
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15.30 - 16:30 Design exercise (to be confirmed) |
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16.30 - 17:00 Reports & wrap-up |
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17:00 Workshop ends |
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