HCI & Education: CHI 2010 Workshop On User Interface/Interaction Technologies and Educational Pedagogy

The 28th CHI 2010 (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) will be held from April 10-15 2010 in Atlanta, GA.  The Workshop on UI Technology & Educational Pedagogy will be one of several workshops held during the conference.

Info from the workshop's website:

Given the exponential growth of interactive whiteboards in classrooms around the world, there has been a need to explore how next generation HCI will impact education in the future. Educators are depending on the interaction communities to deliver technologies that will improve/adapt learning to an ever-changing world.

In addition to novel UI concepts, the HCI community needs to examine how these concepts can be matched to contemporary paradigms in Educational pedagogy. The classroom is a challenging environment for evaluation, thus new techniques need to be established to prove the value of new HCI interactions in the Educational space. This workshop provides a forum to discuss key HCI issues facing next generation education.

We invite authors to present position papers about potential design challenges and perspectives on how the community should handle the next generation of HCI in education. Topics of interest include:

• Gestural input, multitouch, large displays
• Mobile Devices, response systems (clickers)
• Tangible, VR, AR & MR, Multimodal interfaces
• Console gaming, 3D input devices
• Co-located interaction, presentations
• Educational Pedagogy, learner-centric
• Empirical methods, case studies
• Multi-display interaction

Submission:  The deadline for workshop paper submissions is January 6th, 2010. Interested researchers should submit a 4-page position paper in the ACM CHI Extended Abstract Format to the workshop management system. Acceptance notifications will be sent out March 15, 2010. The workshop will be held April 11, 2010 in Atlanta, USA. Please note that at least one author of an accepted position paper must register for the workshop and for one or more days of the CHI 2010 conference. 

Website: http://TechnologyAndPedagogy.edwardtse.com

Workshop Contact:  Edward Tse  edwardtse [at] smarttech.com SMART Technologies

Johannes Schöning

DFKI GmbH

Yvonne Rogers

Pervasive Computing Laboratory

The Open University,

Chia Shen

Scientists Discovery Room

School of Engineering and

Applied Sciences

Harvard University

Gerald Morrison

SMART Technologies

RELATED

Learning Through Touch (pdf) -SMART Technologies

Interactive Administrator: Now is the time for touch SMART Technologies

Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2009 Conference

November 23-25, Banff, Canada

Sensory-Mind's Ring Wall, an interactive multi-touch wall you don't even have to touch!

Sensory-Minds is a small company in Germany that is focused on research and design in the field of Natural User Interfaces. If you visit the SENSORY-MINDS website, you'll find that it has been designed for touch interaction.

ring°wall from SENSORY-MINDS on Vimeo.

Information about the Ring Wall from Sensory-Mind's Vimeo site:

".....The two-piece ring°wall consists of a LED display and a multitouch information-wall and impresses by its size: a total surface of 425 square meters, which equals more than 6000 computer displays, is the biggest of its kind. An interactive World emerges out of 34 million pixels generated by 15 high definition projectors and is supported by 30 directional speakers.


Multitouch sensors basing on laser technology, convert the usage of the natural user interface into an experience. By direct touching, more than 80 users can simultaneously get informed about news and activities around the ringworld.


The interactive wall is not only a central information system, but also an innovative advertising tool and medium for public viewings."

Heiko Hoffman of Sensory-Minds recently joined the NUI-Group.  Here is a response to a question on the NUI-group forum about the way the system's sensors work:


"The sensor works like spinning radar gun, or like a wiper in a car, that means like a radar gun you get the distance to the object.  It’s not quiet difficult when you know the position of the sensor and the degree from the beam to get the X,Y position.  Yes, you don’t need to touch the surface but we arranged it that the radar beam is very close to the screen so it seems that you have to touch the surface.

At the moment the system (has) limitations because each sensor (gets) coordinates and this means that you got shadows.This is no problem because the people interact very fast. We are working on a system where the data from the sensors were put together and that would be the solution for this problem."


Note:

I'll be writing a few more posts updating the work of past and present NUI-group members as well as news from the commercial multi-touch & gesture community.  Be sure to check back soon, or subscribe to this blog!

libTISCH, a multi-touch development framework with multi-touch widgets and more!

For techies and the tech-curious who like technologies that support collaboration and multi-touch interaction,  this is great news!

Florian Echtler announced the first stable releas of libTISCH, a multi-touch development framwork, which can be found on Sourceforge.  TISCH stands for Tangible Interaction Surfaces for Collaboration between Humans.  libTISCH, a C++ software framework, is included in this project.  It provides a means for creating GUIs based on multi-touch and/or tangible input devices.

Here is how it works:

Here is information from libTISCH announcement:


Highlights of this release are, among others, the following features:

- ready-to-use multitouch widgets based on OpenGL
- reconfigurable, hardware-independent gesture recognition engine
- support for widely used (move, scale, rotate..), pre-defined gestures
 as well as custom-defined gestures

- hardware drivers for FTIR, DI, Wiimote, DiamondTouch..
- TUIO converters: source and sink

- cross-platform: Linux, MacOS X, Windows (32 and 64 bit)
- cross-language: C++ with bindings for C#, Java, Python

libTISCH has a lot to offer for the multitouch developer. For example, 
the textured widgets enable rapid development of applications for many
kinds of multi-touch or tangible interfaces. The separate gesture
recognition engine allows the translation of a wide range of highly
configurable gestures into pre-defined or custom events which are then
acted on by the widgets. While the lower layers of libTISCH provide
functionality similar to tbeta, touche etc. (you can interface existing
TUIO-based software with libTISCH in both directions), it goes far
beyond.

More information about the library and underlying architecture can be
found on http://tisch.sf.net/ and in the Sourceforge wiki at
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tisch/

TISCH Project Wiki

RELATED
Florian is on the scientific staff at the Technisch Universitat Munchen in Germany. Be sure to check out his  webpage.

I especially like the concept of the MeTaTop: "A Multi-Sensory Table Top System for Medical Procedures" that is linked from Florian's website.

Techies: How to do Multitouch with Windows Presentation Foundation 4 using Visual Studio 2010

Here is the "how-to" video. I don't have WPF4 or VS2010, so I haven't tried this at home...yet.



I came across this video on Vinod Varma's Software Engineer's blog post, "Multi-touch programming getting simpler."


I'm sure I'm not alone in my present dilemma. I have a burning desire to experiment with multi-touch and Adobe's products, since I used to use Macromedia Studio quite a bit several years ago. Instead of learning ActionScript 3.0, I decided to learn C# and XNA Game Studio, and then went on to play with Windows Presentation Foundation, Expression Blend, and Silverlight.


And what about multi-touch web applications?!

MORE GEAR: Video demo of the 20-inch HP TouchSmart 300 and the 23-inch TouchSmart 600; Also, the HP LD 4200 42-Inch High Def Digital Touch Display

Looking for something techy, yet touchable?  More multi-touch screens will be on the market soon from HP.


Video of the HP TouchSmart PC 300 and 600


Information from the HP YouTube website:


Two new HP TouchSmart PCs packed with exclusive touch applications, the HP TouchSmart 300 and HP TouchSmart 600, feature stunning HD displays with a multitouch enabled screen. Consumers can now stream Netflix movies, watch TV programs, listen to music and internet radio, create photo collages and bring out their inner chef all by simply touching the PC screen. The new consumer PCs feature exclusive built-for-touch applications including: Hulu Desktop, Netflix, Twitter, the HP Music Store powered by Rhapsody, Pandora Internet radio the TouchSmart Recipe Box, and Canvas. The 16:9 widescreen tiles make multimedia, social media and other applications a rich and engaging touch experience. Some models of the HP TouchSmart 600 easily connect to gaming consoles, including Xbox, PlayStation and Wii, via HDMI or composite video ports. The HP TouchSmart 300 starts at $899 and is offered in a 20-inch diagonal widescreen (available Nov. 1). The HP TouchSmart 600 starts at $1,049 and is offered in a 23-inch diagonal widescreen (available Oct. 22).

I like the new features, especially the tilt webcam, the swivel that lets you swivel the screen around as needed,  and the recipe box application.    The a digital recipe box "scrapes" recipes from on-line websites, and allows you to listen to the recipe through a blue-tooth earphone.  The recibe box applications will talk to you as you prepare a meal, hands-free!



For businesses that are looking for high-definition interactive kiosks, 43-inch HP LD4200, diagonal digital signage touch display might be a great solution:

 "Aimed specifically at the digital signage market, with HP noting is suitability for kiosks, retail, point of sale, shopping malls, travel terminals, hotel lobbies, recreational venues, universities, stock exchanges and hospitals, the new 42” HP LD4200tm multitouch LCD display offers Full HD (1080p) resolution and, thanks to utilising infrared and imaging sensors, will happily acknowledge touch commands such as zoom pinching and drag scrolling thus bringing true interactivity to information and advertising visualisations...On top of its mulittouch capabilities the HP LD4200tm boasts ultra-wide 178 x 178 degree viewing angles and is set to ship from December with a price tag of just shy of $2,800" - Andrew Tingle, TFTS

Note:  NextWindow is the creator of the touchscreens.

IntuiLab's Interfaces: Multi-touch applications/solutions for presentation, collaboration, GIS, and commerce

This is a company I've been meaning to write about!   Here is the plug from the IntuiLab website:

"Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Toulouse, France, IntuiLab is a leader in the design and development of surface computing-based applications. Through IntuiFace, the company’s portable, scalable and extensible software surface computing platform, IntuiLab delivers and deploys applications that bring tangible returns on investment to its clients by providing their customers and users with a more natural, immersive and memorable interactive experience. IntuiLab is a Microsoft and Adobe partner and has clients in a wide variety of industries such as retail, food and health, banking, aerospace and defense, telecoms and hospitality."

"We are able to deliver such benefits to our customers thanks to a unique blend of skills (our multidisciplinary IntuiTeam), technology (the IntuiFace Surface Computing Software Platform), process (the IntuiSign design process) and a wide range of partners."

R.U.S.E. on Intuilab's Interface

IntuiLab lets you blow things up with your hands (Jimin Brelsford, CrunchGear 10/09/09)
 It is not all for fun and games:


Amazon Multi-touch Clinet on the IntuiFace Platform

"This video shows an example of how to access to an online retail catalogue (such as Amazon) from a Surface Computer rich client, and create, browse and merge lists of queried or selected items in a natural way." -Intuilabs



 Multi-user Web Browsing on a Windows 7-based 19" 3M Multi-touch




Pictures from the Intuilab website:

If you take a look at Intuilab's "the team" page, you'll find that they look like...graduate students! They probably are, or were, given the size of list of published papers. This tells me that they must have their heart, mind, and souls poured into the business!

IntuiLab's Partners

I should brush up on my French and pay them a visit!

So how are people using their multi-touch all-in-ones? Medion X9613 will be relased soon in Germany, next, the US?

The Medion x9613 is a Windows 7, multi-touch all-in-one that has all of the features needed for playing games, working collaboratively with a colleague or classmate, watching HD video content, and more.

The following YouTube video is from Gizmodo, via Engadget.


According to Cali Lewis, of GeekBrief TV, this all-in-one will be available in the US. (Cali also previews other interesting gadgets and tech on the GeekBrief TV clip below.)



RELATED
Medion X9613: A Multitouch PC that Longs to Be Your Home Theater
Mark Wilson, Gizmodo


I haven't set eyes on this one yet. If anyone has played with a Medion X9613 a bit, or even used it for work, please leave a comment! How do YOU use your "All-in-One?"

London Design Festival Winners - Visualization Category: Multi-Touch Barcelona; Experiential Category: LM3Labs

Multitouch Barcelona and LM3Labs were among the winners in the London Design Festival!

Visualization Category:  Multi-Touch Barcelona

Human Interface (A Real Human!)

Hi from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.
 

"With a client list that includes Red Bull, you know these guys aren’t messing around. Multitouch Barcelona designs "experiences that merge real and digital into a creative environment where people are invited to touch, play, move, feel as they do in the real world."  Clearly enjoying a tongue-in-cheek methodology, the group’s philosophy seems to grow out of an affinity for natural interaction. The recent work showcased at Offf (a festival for, um, "post-digital creation culture") perfectly shows both their whimsy and tech chops. For example, the Human Interface, a person you use as a computer by asking him to carry out tasks such as email using a keyboard made from cardboard and tubes that carry email around.  Nothing short of hilarious and yet strangely alarming." -Grand designers:  the world's best design work Paul Armstrong,  Wired UK,    8/17/09



I love Multitouch Barcelona. Especially their Space Invaders project.
(I posted this video previously, but I like it so much I decided to post it again!)

Multitouch Space Invaders XL from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.




Another company I follow,  LM3Labs, won in the Experiential category:

Showreel:

Applications for touch, multi-touch, and gesture interaction: What's Marching to Market?

Every week or so, I hear about a new multi-touch enabled laptop.Today, I came across a review on Gizmodo about the Lenovo ThinkPad T400, which is a 14.1 capacitive touchscreen laptop that can handle four touches at once:

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s with Multitouch Review: Finger Flicking Fun


The Multitouch ThinkPad in Action

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s with Multitouch from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

SCREENSHOT
 
"The screen is pure beauty. Like a capacitive touchscreen phone, light taps on the display are responsive and you don't have to think about positioning your finger in a certain way to open apps or rearrange windows." - Joanna Stern, Gizmodo, 9/15/09


OTHER EXAMPLES
 
THE FUJITSU LIFEBOOK T5010

Add the Fujitsu LifeBook t5010 to the Windows 7 Multitouch Laptop List
Gizmodo, Joanna Stern, 9/15/09



DELL LATITUDE XT2
 

 












TOUCH DEMO- HP TOUCHSMART TX2 & WINDOWS 7


AIR HOCKEY FOR WINDOWS 7: IDENTITY MINE


FINGERTAPPS





Want to create something multi-touch?

It looks like there will be a growing need for Windows 7 application developers.  Here's some code examples using Windows Presentation Foundation and the Windows 7 Multitouch API

Windows 7 Multitouch Application Development, Part I (The Code Project: Kunal Chowdhury)


Other Developer Resources

Touchlib Multi-touch Development Kit  (NUI GROUP)

MSDN Windows Touch: Developer Resources

nTrig's Multi-Touch Download for Windows 7

NUITech's Snowflake Suite for NextWindow

TouchKit Multi-touch Development Kit


GestureWorks Flash Multitouch SDK

3M Multi-touch Developer Kit


RELATED
Touch-less Interaction from lm3labs

Create the future you want. with ubiq'window from Nicolas Loeillot on Vimeo.

More about gesture interaction and multi-touch can be found on this blog- do a search!

Stantum's Mobile Phone Multi-touch Interface: Demonstration of Precise Interactions on a Resistive Touch Screen

For more information, read Paul Miller's article (Engadget), Stantum's mind-blowing multitouch interface on video!



Paul Miller says:

"The PMatrix multitouch firmware allows for unlimited inputs, detection of any contacting object (a finger, a stylus or even a paintbrush) and pressure sensitivity. We played with the demo unit for a bit and were frankly blown away, it's far and away the best touch experience we've ever seen or felt, and the multitouch functionality is just gravy on top. Stantum is targeting resistive touchscreens because they're still considerably cheaper to build than capacitive ones, and from our perspective there seems to be zero tradeoff -- for sensitivity and accuracy this destroys everything else we've seen on the market, capacitive or not."

How it works:  Tech Specs from Stantum:

PMatrix: The unparalleled Multi-Touch IP core and detection firmware (pdf)


"PMatrix™ is the most powerful software engine for Multi-Touch technology. It runs as a chip firmware or software on controllers orany embedded processing devices. PMatrix scans and delivers an exact representation of what’s happening on the touch-panel. The Multi-Touch driver dynamically updates the cursor list, enabling any application to control the Graphical User Interface objects."

Stantum's rational behind the company's choice of using resistive rather than capacitive touch technology:

Why resistive? :
In comparison to capacitive sensing, resistive technology brings :

• Versatility : it detects fingers, gloves, stylus and any contact object
• A lower solution cost
• Lower power consumption
• Faster scanning rate
• Lower overall latency
• Precision is linear (same in the center and at the borders)
• Performance is not affected by the size of the touch-panel or the number of touches
• Transparency and soft touch enabling user experience equivalent to the best capacitive touch-panels

I'll update this post when I have more information!


RELATED

For in-depth, detailed information about resisitive multi-touch technology,  read the following posts via Touch User Interface:

How the Stantum's Resistive Multi-Touch Screen Works 
Pressure Sensitive Multi-touch Surfaces

Multi-touch, multimedia, multi-modal: Fujitsu LIFEBOOK T4310 has a multitude of possibilities!

Multi-touch, multi-media, multi-modal... the Fujitsu LIFEBOOK T4310 looks like it provides multiple possibilities for people from all walks of life:

-GestureWorks

The LIFEBOOK T4310 comes with an integrated web cam and fingerprint reader, and a variety of I/O options, including HDMI, USB, Firewire, BlueTooth,  LAN, analog video output, SD card reader, line in/out, a wireless switch for the integrated 3G and UMTS, and an express card reader. There is an optional modular bay that can accommodate an additional drive or battery.


The fun part is that the Fujitsu LIFEBOOK T4310 hands-on comes with Microsoft's Touch Pack applications, which are demonstrated in the video below:

• Microsoft Surface globe
• Surface Collage
• Microsoft Rebound touch game
• Surface Lagoon screensaver, which provides a water-ripple effect and little fish that respond to touch interaction.

As demonstrated in the video, the LIFEBOOK supports gesture interaction, multi-touch interaction, stylus interaction, and traditional keyboard interaction. The capacitive display has a bi-directional hinge, allowing it to be turned 360 degrees, and also positioned so that the display can be set facing up horizontally over the keyboard. (This feature would be welcomed in educational settings, if the notebook was used in education settings, as it could support paired and group collaborative learning activities.)


What I like about the LIFEBOOK is that it has an integrated ambient light sensor, which automatically adjusts the brightness of the display according to the level of light in the environment. This feature is important for people like me who are on the go and must use their computing devices under a range of lighting conditions.


I would love to get my hands on the Fujitsu LIFEBOOK T4310 for a month and test the system in-depth in my day-job as a school psychologist, and in my leisure pursuits as a UX/designer/developer/musician/gamer/etc,  "hobbyist".


Can anyone make this dream come true?


RELATED:
Fujitsu's multitouch LIFEBOOK T4310 tablet makes quick work of Microsoft's Touch Pack 
(Paul Miller, Engadget, 9/6/009)
Microsoft Touch Pack Gallery (Engadget)
Engadget's Reader Comments


I visited Fujitsu's website to gather additional information, and found a couple of press releases in German:


IFA 2009:  Fujitsu setzt auf Fingerspitzengefuhl und prasentiert  Notebook mit Multiple-Touch-Function (pdf)


Here is the press contact:


Fujitsu Technology Solutions
Melanie Wolf, Senior PR Manager
Tel.: + 49 (0) 89 62060 4458, Mobile: + 49 (0) 171 33 42 882,
Melanie.wolf@ts.fujitsu.com

Multi-touch on Firefox: Felipe Gome's Work

Felipe Gomes is a 4th-year computer engineering student at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He's been working on a multi-touch project that enables the FireFox web browser to respond to multi-touch interaction and gestures. Below is a demonstration of this work:

Multitouch on Firefox from Felipe on Vimeo.

Code snippets for the demo can be found on the Mozilla Wiki

Seth Sandler's "Slider" Dynamic Multi-player Game using Reactivision + Flash

Seth Sandler, known for his MT Mini, an inexpensive DIY interactive multi-touch pad, is looking for input and ideas that will help him improve or enhance Slider, a game he created about two years ago. Take a look at the demo:



"This game uses reactivision software, along with Flash, to detect symbol fiducial block movements. The game is played by moving these symbols on a table. Players can enter and exit the playing field at any time. The game adapts to the number of players. The lower the score the better; the first player with a score of 12 ends the game. Future plans include: Projecting directly on the surface. Implementing multitouch so users can play with their fingers and objects instead of only object symbols."

Music: Waterdrops by Yohan Shin

More Multi-touch! Rumor of the Mobile Apple iTablet; Adobe XD & Multitouch; 10-Finger Mobile Multitouch

I heard that Apple is coming out with a larger iPhone, an "iTablet".



This is a rumor I've heard for a while. Here are a few articles:

Tech Rumor of the Day: Apple, Verizon Team Up on Tablet
Scott Moritz, TheStreet.com, 7/21/09

Apple to Release Subsidized Tablet Through Verizon Later This Year?
Eric Slivka, MacRumors, 7/22/09


I also heard that lots of things are happening at Adobe.

Wouldn't it be fun to paint like this?

The interface on the left is multi-touch and allows you to effortlessly fine-tune color selection as you paint. This interaction is described in the Adobe XD video below.



Senior Experience Designer Julie Meridian and Senior Computer Scientist Tim Kukulski discuss the future of multitouch, and showcase XD's cutting-edge multitouch R+D effort.


XD is the acronym for Adobe Experience Design, a multi-disciplinary group that numbers over 100. This group is focusing on multi-touch applications for a wide range of uses.

FYI: The Adobe Experience Design Team offers an on-line publication, "Inspire". I think that the website could use a re-design...




Ten-finger multitouch headed to mobile gadgets this year
Jacqueline Emigh, BetaNews, 7/22/09
"Synaptics, the creator of touchscreens already embellishing the iPhone and G1 Android phone, today rolled out new multitouch technology for mobile gizmos which rivals that of Microsoft-'s table-sized Surface."

-photo from BetaNews

"For people interested in building their own multitouch-driven mobile applications, Synaptics plans a Microsoft Windows .NET-based development kit for the end of 2009, to coincide with the first 3000-driven handheld gaming machines, personal navigation devices (PNDs), and other gadgetry from Synaptics' OEM partners."

For more information, see the video.

RELATED

TechOnline's On-Demand Webinars:

Designing Compelling User Interfaces with Multi-touch All-Point Touchscreen Technology
Touch Screens: The Magic Behind Multi-Touch

Note: I haven't had a chance to see the above webinars. If you've viewed them, please leave a comment!

NUI-Group Members: What are they doing now?

Multitouch Media Application Pro v3.0 from Falcon4ever on Vimeo.

MMA Pro is a multitouch photo and video organizer build in Adobe AIR (Flex3) and has new features such as Google Maps, support for uploading pictures on the fly using blue-tooth. For more information, visit Laurence Muller's website, Multigesture.Net. There you can download the application. Make sure you read the install instructions that are included in the readme.text, and also make sure that you have the latest Adobe AIR 1.5.x. Laurence also recommends installing BlueSoleil to handing the pairing of devices and file transfers. (If you've never programmed for Bluetooth, take his advice!)

Laurence Muller (M.Sc.) is a Scientific Programmer at the University of Amsterdam who develops scientific software for multi-touch devices. He is a member of the NUI-Group.

The following video highlights some of the applications from the University of Amsterdam from about a year ago:

Multitouch Applications from Falcon4ever on Vimeo.

Feel free to leave a comment and a link or two if you are a NUI-Group member and like to share your recent projects!

More from Multitouch Barcelona!

Multitouch Barcelona is up to more great work!

Multitouch Space Invaders XL

Multitouch Space Invaders XL from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

Guten Touch, by Multitouch Barcelona

GUTEN TOUCH from Multitouch Barcelona on Vimeo.

"Designed for the Red Bull Music Academy 08, Guten Touch is an interactive installation that involves people into a natural relationship with technology. A two projected display system plus a 3m x 2m multitouch wall showcase applications designed to engage us into human friendly experiences rather than flashy and jaw-dropping visualizations. Space Invaders hit by foam balls, pixel paintings created with brushes and digital objects held by hands try to blur boundaries between real and digital."

Multi-touch Barcelona (new site)
"Multitouch Barcelona is a recently born interaction design group that explores natural communication between people and technology. They design touch sensitive environments where real world interactions move to a digital context. Interfaces where people touch, play, move, feel...Where senses play their natural role, where everything just 'happens" as it does in the real world. "




RELATED
Offf 2009: International Festival for the Post-Digital Creation Culture

Rhizome 2009: A Lovely Interactive Multi-touch App on a Flexible Lycra Screen

Loran Bey is a member of the NUI group. He created Rhizome 2009 using Unity 3D and tBeta, now know as CCV (Community Core Vision). The screen in the video is made from flexible lycra, and this provides a tangible interaction effect. The music in the background is Aphix Twin's Avril 14th.

MultiTouch Screen Lycra from Loran Bey on Vimeo.

Unity 3D is a game development tool for browser-base games, including games optimized for the iPhone. (If you visit the Unity 3D website, be sure to download their 3D web plugin and visit their relaxing on-line Tropical Paradise.)

The screen displayed in the video was inspired by the 2005 Khronos Projector installation, by Alvero Cassinelli, an assistant professor at the Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. Khronos is described as a "video time-warping machine with a deformable screen."

The Khronos Projector website provides several simulation applets built with Processing that you can play with. They were fun to interact with on my HP TouchSmart PC. I liked Behind the Door the best.

The following video demonstrates how the Khronos application works:


Take a look at Alvaro Cassinelli's archive of his interactive media art if you have the chance!

Cassinelli's Meta-Perception research group is doing some interesting things, too:

"The goal of this group is to research methods for capturing and manipulating information that is normally inaccessible to humans and machines. In doing so, we hope to create new ways of perceiving the world and interacting with technology. Our research methods span fields such as human-computer interaction, media arts, physiology, and ethics."

Good news about the San Jose Interactive Displays Conference (that I couldn't attend)

Sadly, I was unable to attend the Interactive Displays conference that was held last week in San Jose, California. Jeff Han, the guy in the video clip in my sidebar, was one of the keynote presenters. I really wish I could have seen - and touched - the action!

Update (4/27/09) from Thomas Hansen, a member of NUI Group, who attended IDC:

"..It was certainly an interesting event. I got to talk (albeit briefly) to both Andy Wilson and Jeff Han. Both of whom produce very inspiring and world class UI/HCI research on a consistent basis. Further, it was a great honor to meet some of the other members of the nuigroup community in person, some of whom where inspiring not only because of their amazing intellect and artistic talents, but especially due to their friendliness, benevolence, and maturity."

Here are a few excerpts from people who were fortunate to attend and then write about the experience:

Putting our arms around the future of touch Ina Fried , CNET 4/23/09

"..if you used one of the interactive displays here to show a heat map of this industry, it would glow red hot. That's because touch displays, for years relegated to kiosks and industrial uses, are quickly becoming mainstream. Hewlett-Packard and Dell already have touch-capable machines, while Microsoft is set to make gesture input standard with Windows 7...For his own part, Han said he was inspired by seeing a PBS documentary in the early 1980s that showed Microsoft researcher Bill Buxton, then at the University of Toronto, using multitouch to compose music on a computer. The computer itself was a green screen with an ancient processor and little memory, but the key underlying concept was already there..

"Sometimes it takes that long for these things to marinate and gestate," Han said....And while things are now taking off, Han urged the crowd not to forsake quality in the rush to take advantage of a hot market. "That will ruin it and mess it up for all of us, and that would be a real shame," Han said."

Interactive Displays Conference Highlights Kevin Arthur, Touch Usability 4/22/09

"...He (Jeff Han) showed a great clip from an early 80s TV show called Bits and Bytes that featured a young Bill Buxton demonstrating some of his tablet work at the University of Toronto...Jeff Han's point in showing this clip was not just to share what inspired him as a kid to pursue computer science as a career. He also wanted to make the point that none of this stuff is really new. He urged the audience not to jump on whatever tech is cool this week, but to be aware of the history and to do the research. Be thoughtful and careful about what you're making. He said one of his fears with the multitouch craze is that the waters will be poisoned by bad and poorly conceived implementations. He said "don't add noise" to the ecosystem by using terms sloppily -- like "multitouch"...

The importance of being more thoughtful and mindful of prior work are not exactly new to most of us with design, HCI, or CS backgrounds, but the audience here is largely made up of marketing or other business types, I believe, who sometimes tend to get a bit carried away, you might say. I mean no disrespect to my friends in marketing..."

Interactive Displays Conference San Jose Harry van der Veen, 4/25/09
" Big thumbs up for Pira tech for managing to get so many multi-touch industry professionals (Wacom, Mindstorm, NextWindow, 3M, Jeff Han (Perceptive Pixel), LG, Tyco Electronics, Stantum and more) and hobbyists together."

Dell Studio One 19 Touch Zone App by Fingertapps: The Video

Here is the video demonstration of Dell Studio One 19 Touch Zone, developed by Fingertapps, a New Zealand software company:



The Dell Studio One with Fingertapp's multi-touch natural user interface software is due for launch soon, according to Ben Wilde and Dave Brebner, of Fingertapps. Here is a link to a recent Engadget article by Paul Miller: Dell demos multitouch on the Studio One 29 (with additional videos)

Struktable Multi-touch Installation at TOCA ME Design Conference

Struktable Multitouch Installation from Gregor Hofbauer on Vimeo.


Strukt is a design studio in Vienna, Austria, that specializes in interactive and generative design for a variety of purposes, such as interactive environments and installations, ambient intelligent environments, games, and multi-touch tables, screens, and walls. The video is a demonstration of applications that were presented at the March 2009 TOCA ME Design Conference in Munich, Germany. The applications were developed using vvvv. (More information regarding vvvv can be found at the end of this post.)




INFO FOR THE TECH-SAVVY OR TECH-CURIOUS:

According to information from the vvvv website, vvvv is a "toolkit for real time video synthesis. It is designed to facilitate the handling of large media environments with physical interfaces, real-time motion graphics, audio and video that can interact with many users simultaneously. vvvv is a visual programming interface. Therefore it provides a graphical programming language for easy prototyping and development. vvvv is real time, where many other languages have distinct modes for building and running programs, vvv only has one mode, run-time. vvvv is free for non-commercial use."

VVVV Screenshots
VVVV's Propaganda Page
Other projects using VVVV
Struktable: the 70-inch Multitouch Table

STRUK ON A SPHERE: Interactive installation at a Mercedes Benz conference