Genovefa’s Literature Review
Brugg Ullmer, Hiroshi Ishii, ”The metaDESK: Models and Prototypes for Tangible user interfaces”, Proceedings of UIST 1997, Oct 14-17, ACM Digital Library
metaDesk is a general purpose somehow “intelligent” desk prototype that it’s main feature is that employs tangible interface for it’s users.
The concept and the aim behind its design is to provide a physical appearance to the menus, icons and windows of computer applications. In other words, metaDesk was designed to find a way to go from the strictly digital world of computers to physical information. It consists of the desk which is an almost horizontal graphical interface which is projected. Also it has two types of lens: active (responsible for providing a flat panel output) and passive (responsible for providing a transparent surface for the projection). FInally it has a number of different physical objects(like bricks) that are used for the tangible interaction of the users. In order all these to work and collaborate together there are special sensors of electromagnetical, optical and mechanical nature.
Each of the different physical objects that are used to be touched by the user onto the metaDesk have different forms and represent different instances of the computer applications. For example, one physical object of metaDesk is a phicon and this represents the icons of an application. Another one is a pair of lens and this represents a window in an applications. The users by touching these objects they interact with the actual computer application from the metaDesk. A very interesting application of metaDesk is the tangible Geospace which is somehow similar to the work of Nicolas with Pins and Play.
As in Nicolas work it was used Google Earth to test several things, in metaDesk it was placed a phicon onto the metaDesk and by this movement a map appeared onto the metaDesk. By using other types of physical objects such as lens the 2d map was transformed to a 3d one. Again the main point of this research was to find a more physical way to interact with applications. Such a technology could be used in computer games of 3d nature to have a more physical feeling of the game characters and a more real feeling of taking real actions during the game.
Frederic Vernier, “Visualization Techniques for circular Tabletop Interfaces”, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Advanced Visual Interfaces May 2002, Italy
This paper is a research concerning the design and implementation of an interface “applied”on tabletop surfaces that have a round shape.
This research stars by discussing the necessities that such interfaces introduce as far as how possible documents and pictures placed on it are located. Part of the research was to investigate the possible changes that such an interactive circular tabletop might have during it’s use and use these identifications to build an approach to control the table information. However, the main aim of this paper is not to compute immediately and find the location of the papers located according to their coordinates in space following the tree-style structure but to provide an effective and user-friendly interface for manipulating the data on the circular table. The possible manipulations of data includes navigation, browsing, organisation and visualisation of digital data.
Also, this paper tries to combine the benefits of a circular tabletop such as the freedom of having someone his/her own space while working as well as possibilities of sharing space with other users. It focuses on the management of user’s documents. Having this focus as the initial concern the next question to be answered is how the orientation problems that might occur could be handled because of the nature of the shape of the table. The prototype tangible tabletop is implemented in Java in Win2000. Another important point of this research is the how they take advantage of the nature of the circular tabletop. More specifically, two characteristics of it are that is rotatablen and have menus of operations that can be performed on the document.
The coordination system of the table is determined by the distance of each document from table’s center, from the angle of the rotation around table’s center and from the angle of rotation around document’s center. Furthermore, the prototype has two systems of orientation: centric and magnetised. Both of them are quite useful but magnetised can be used also for the rotation of the whole interface. The presentation of the papers on the table’s surface is supported by hierarchical and tree structures. However, the tree structures are implemented with visual range of 90 degrees. A concern could be to find a way to have a different representation/rotation of the documents for each user at the same time so as all the users to view all the papers in the way that they want. Visual information is a little bit tricky while in the Pin and Play project where hardware items/pins are used for the tangible interaction do not introduce such problems.
Jim Youll, Dana Siegel, “Ambient Dayplanner: A tangible Interface for public and private appointment calendars”, MIT Media Laboratory, 2000
It’s a tangible projected display on the wall that shows the time and future sceduled appointments. The user can set a reminder using Ambient Dayplanner and has 2 different “modes” for the schedules: a private and a public.
A characteristic of it which is quite important is that is discrete and does not block user’s attention when is not needed. It has mechanisms for fading as time passes by for this reason. Another crucial point of Ambient Dayplanner is that it’s conceptual use is somehow embedded into the physical environment of the user. There is no need for extra physical hardware devices such as computers. Also, comparing to the usual analog and digital clocks this prototype does not give too much or too little information for the nearly future appointments that is not needed for each time being.
Although this paper is not that much directly connected to Pin and Play project and to game tangible interfaces, the concept of having displayed information of various kind (in this case schedules) could be a supplementary part of a game application based o Pin and Play concept. The only somehow similar concept that it has with Pin and Play is the pinning of pegs on the prototype’s pegboard for the setting of the reminder feature. Also, another important concept is the modes the Ambient Planner has (private/public) that could be applied somehow in Pin and Play project for providing some kind of security for the prototype especially at a distributed level of use.
Matthey G.Corbet, Maggie Orth, Hiroshi Ishii, “Triangles: Tangible Interface for Manipulation and Exploration of digital Information Topography”, Proceedings 0f CHI1998, April 18-23, 1998 ACM Digital Library
Triangles constitute a construction kit that is based on physicality and digital elements. It enables users to “touch” and manipulate digital information. This is succeeded with the use of plastic triangles.
This shape was chosen because it implies less semantic information that could interrupt and confuse the users. Also, they are easier attachable and connectable to each other. These triangles have microprocessors embedded in them and also make use of the magnetic theory as their edges have connectors made of magnets. The reason behind connectors existence is the physical connection and communication among the triangles. Moreover, these connectors apart from magnetically being activated they also exchange electricity so as to be able to communicate digital information among them and a PC. This information is sent to the PC and so the latter keeps track of it. In other words, the triangles-PC system operates as an information topology system.
The very important characteristic of them is their size that allows theoretically almost an infinite number of different 2D and 3D reconfigurations. Their nature provides a novel “construction” of tangible interfaces. However the most interesting part of this research paper is the applications that Triangles have. These include non linear storytelling, an audio comic book and access to web pages with them. In the non linear storytelling the users arrange and rearrange the way they connect and attach the Triangles together and this information is sent to the PC where it is mapped to Web pages that contain the actual storytelling. Each triangle may represent either a single character of the storytelling or a scene/action of it. The audio comic book of Cinderella is considered to be as an advanced version of the non linear storytelling application.
This is because it includes audio effects that each of these is successfully mapped to the correspondant movement of Triangles. This gives the ability to the users to enjoy a more real way of storytelling. However, some concerns that arose from these applications was that still the spontaneous feeling and actions that a storyteller/narrators have are missing. Furthermore the case of connecting in the wrong way or inappropriate triangles together is missed.
The difference now of PIn and Play project is that does not use geometric shapes for the tangible physical objects but pins which are equally or more enjoyable in their touch feeling. Maybe an adoption to Pin and Play concept could be the mappings of different connections/communications between/among pins that would represent to the computer or the distributed users specific events.
Joseph A. Paradiso, Kai-Yuh Hsiao, Ari Benbasat, “Tangible Music Interfaces using Passive Magnetic Tags”, Responsive Environments Group, MIT Media Laboratory
The particular research paper is concerned with the implementation of user interfaces that are based on tangible magnetic tags for the development of musical toys applications as well as musical controllers.
This research was forced by the need to find a way the musical controllers that are used nowadays to have a tangible interface and to identify using sensors different body parts. The main aim is to produce an advanced and “expressive” musical controllers interface. A way to succeed this was the use of magnetic tags that would be able with their low-frequency magnetic fields to “pass” easily
the body parts that need to be identified. Also, the fact that the type of the magnetic tags used is passive, helps taking the advantage of the magnetic field theory and the compact and relatively cheap nature of these tags.
The tag-reader technology used for the prototype is called “pulse-induction ringdown reader”. With this technology magnetic pulses are sent to the resonant frequency of the tags and then responses are expected to be listened. However, this technique is quite slow although it exhibits high sensitivity. Because of that a different tag technology was adopted based on the detection of dynamic loading of the tags. The physical objects that use these tags in this prototype include an eyeball, a cube, a pig, small ghosts worn as rings and others. All these are called trinkets and each of these has different characteristics and different type and number of sensors. An application of this technology is called Musical Trinkets.
The trinkets of this application represent different musical instruments and all together when appropriately touched produce a musical “concert”. A PC is attached so as to process the dynamic data taken from trinkets, converts it to MIDI data and then produces relative graphics with the use of synthesizers. Being another research paper that incorporates magnetic fields theory in tangible interfaces it shows the interesting ways of using magnets for the production of music. Although again not connected directly to Pin and Play project or game applications in general this technology could be considered to be an addition to features that applications using Pin and Play concept could have. For example, maybe magnetic fields could be used for the identification of unauthorised users of applications that use PIn and Play concept?...
Christiane Uhbricht, Dieter Schmalstieg, “Tangible Augmented Reality for computer games”
This research paper is concerned with adopting the concept of tangible interfaces to building computer game applications that can be used by more than one players. A prototype was produced to show how augmented reality could be used for this purpose.
The main concept that in this paper is discussed is called Tangible Augmented Reality and is a combinations of Tangible User Interfaces and Augmented Reality SYstems. The prototype was built based on this concept. The main benefits of adopting this concept was that enabled the users to see and interact with 3D objects in the application. This made the whole interaction more natural. Also, enabled them to “touch” these 3D objects making the application more enjoyable.
Moreover, more than one users can take part to the same application at the same time and being able to see and manipulate the same objects. Finally, both hands could be used for the interaction that made it more real. Now the parts of this prototype include The Studierstube
which is a Augmented Reality System, the ArtToolKit for the optical identification of the objects that would be on the prototype’s Tangible User Interface. Also a camera is used that helps the optical identification of the objects. The games that were tested on it were of two kinds…action games and strategy games. Although this paper not connected that much with PIn and Play project is a quite interesting research on how augmented reality and tangible interfaces could collaborate to build more enjoyable and physically interacting computer games…
Elizabeth D.Mynatt, Takeo Igarashi, W.Keith Edwards, Anthony LaMarca, “Flatland: New dimensions in office Whiteboards”, CHI1999
Flatland is used for assisting office issues as it is an augmented whiteboard. It’s aim is to manage as better as possible the writing space on the board as well as to support possible interacting applications and also handling history of events occured on the Flatland.
The envisage of it was to provide to the users the capability of sketching on it and thus expressing their thoughts and the reminding capability so as not to miss important things. Also, it would be used as a process thinking medium providing the opportunity to write what he/she thinks about with different kind of stages.
However, it cannot support services like the other machines or applications such as having to-do lists as PDAs have or being able to connect to the Internet to have access to the e-mail clients or e-notebooks. Its hardware consists of a whiteboard, a projector. It takes stylus input however that makes it quite usual as there is not that much the tangible feeling. The only quite tangible feature that it has is the reminder where the users have to touch special pins to set a reminder.
Scott Brave, Hiroshi Ishii, Andrew Dahley, “Tangible Interfaces for remote collaboration and communication”, Proceedings CSCW 1998, Nov 14-18, 1998
This paper introduces a new way for the users to communicate and collaborate with each other. This way of remote interaction is based on the idea of Tangible User Interfaces.
TUIs are incorporated in this research into a concept called Synchronised Distributed Physical objects. According to this concept the users become able to interact with each other having the illusion that they use the same physical objects. It is a quite remarkable paper because shows ways and applications that physicality could be adopted in user’s e-interactions.
The most interesting detail of it is that focuses not only in one-to-one interaction or to a single location interaction but also to one-to-many, many-to-many and distributed location interaction. So, the research become more applicable and more in “reality” because the usual nature of human interaction is mainly distributed as human beings are highy sociable. Apart from that, physicality is considered to play considerable role in interpersonal communication.
One application using SDPO that is implemented and presented in this paper is PsyBench. The latter is an attempt to have distance communication with the use of 2 remote squared boards. The users could then, when making a move of an object in one board, the users of the oter board could see at the same time the movement occured in the first board. Also, they would be able to “touch” the moving object. Again, as in other presented papers, the prototype uses magnets and magnetic fields as well as a 10 by 8 grid with switches sensors for the identification of the location.
The other discussed application is called inTouch and is based on Telehaptic communication. The aim of this prototype was to offer to the users the feeling of touching sense even in a distance. inTouch consists of 2 objects that have 3 rollers. Each roller in one object has the total equivalent correspondant roller in the other object so as when this roller is touched in one object then this sense of touching goes to the equivalent correspondent roller of the other object. This prototype has 2 modes. One for single location and another one for networked users.
The very interesting part that could be adopted from this paper is the distributed physicality concept. This could be applied also to Pin and Play as it there could be users in different locations that could share the touching sense of the pins and perform shared operations or play shared games using the “same” pins.
Hiroshi Ishii, Craig Wisneski, Julian Orbanes, Ben Chun, Joe Paradiso, “PingPongPlus: Design of an Athletic-Tangible Interface for computer supported cooperative play”, Proceedings CHI( May 15-20, ACM Digital Library
PingPongPlus is a tangible interface for playing ping pong in a collaborative way. It comes with a ball tracking technology based on sounds. According to the sound that ping pong ball is doing (higher or lower sounds) the location of it is identified each time with quite high precision. It has a variety of playing modes (fast or slow) to include a wide range of ping pong playing style.
PingPongPlus is a way to support and provide kinesthesia during the playing of the game as this is the most enjoyable part of it. The system consists of a video projector, a computer, appropriate electronics for the ball tracking and eight microphones beneath the table. So, the users/players/audience can identify and process the digital information in combination with the identification of the graspable objects and the information that is kept on-line. This is also achieved with the reactivity that the ping pong table has. It is a quite interesting paper in terms of viewing how tangible interfaces can assist in having more enjoyable and spectated games.
Although in the research paper is not that clear the practical reason for doing this attempt, it could be said that it’s practical purpose could be to help more people from the audience to watch better the game. Someone else might say instead why not placing just simple cameras to help the audience see better but at this point a possible answer might be that this prototype gives also precise information (although not much at this stage) of players movements and way of playing. Thus, it could be assumed that this prototype could be interesting for ping pong lessons assisting the instructors of ping pong in their job of learning to others the ping pong skills and ways of playing.
J.Cohen, M.Withgott, P.Piernot, “Logjam: a tangible multiperson interface for video logging”, Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI’99, Pittsburgh, 1999
Logjam is a tangible system for video logging. It consists of a game board which has the characteristic of identification of the location of the objects that are on the game board as well as it is able to identify these objects on the board.
The role of the board is to provide an interface to the users that can be touched so as to log video footage. This logging can be done by more than one users and even simultaneously. Although this paper gives examples of work applications that “fired” the design of such a prototype, in my opinion this could be used for the interaction with computer games applications that have more one players. This is because this tangible prototype was initially thought of as it could assist to manage the huge amount of video tapes recorded by journalists in Vietnam. The problem that was identified at this point was that it was very difficult for the journalists and photographers to keep track and remember exactly the pictures and photos that they had taken as well as their position in the tapes.
The game board of Logjam consists also of a number of different blocks that represent different things. It also has a processor for handling the events that occur on the board and a connection to a computer using a serial line. For the display it has a display video and computer monitor. The Logjam software is written in Lisp language for Macs. A proposed scenario is when possible users, that watch a videotape which is played at normal speed, would quickly drop onto the gameboard different blocks that represent different categories which are applied to the videotape at this specific time. Then the users should quickly remove the blocks from the gameboard when this category no longer is applied.
A possible disadvantage of this in my opinion it might be that maybe the way the blocks are droped each time may not be quite effective because they have to be dropped and removed from the gameboard very quickly to regain the system’s state as it is wanted each time. It is not sure if these actions are quite applicable especially in applications that necessitate many and quick actions at the same time without unexpected events such as dropping the blocks in the wrong position or even drop them on the floor because of the speed.