Dennis and Debbie Club Micro-Residency at University of Glasgow

Posted on March 5, 2017 by Julie

I’m very excited to announce that the Dennis and Debbie Club will be doing a micro-residency with the Public and Performative Interaction Group at the University of Glasgow. Dennis and Debbie have worked across a range of open source technologies to create animations, video installations and virtual reality experiences. For the month of March, Dennis and Debbie will work with the EPSRC IAA Funded Virtual Errands Task Project to explore walk up experience and presence in virtual environments.

Watch this space for updates on this project. To see more about the Dennis and Debbie Club, visit http://dennisanddebbie.club/

Understanding Public Evaluation: Quantifying Experimenter Intervention

Posted on February 23, 2017 by Julie

Understanding Public Evaluation: Quantifying Experimenter Intervention from Julie Williamson on Vimeo.

We’re very excited that our CHI 2017 paper has been given a Best Paper Award (top 1% of submissions).

Public evaluations are popular because some research questions can only be answered by turning “to the wild.” Different approaches place experimenters in different roles during deployment, which has implications for the kinds of data that can be collected and the potential bias introduced by the experimenter. This paper expands our understanding of how experimenter roles impact public evaluations and provides an empirical basis to consider different evaluation approaches. We completed an evaluation of a playful gesture-controlled display – not to understand interaction at the display but to compare different evaluation approaches. The conditions placed the experimenter in three roles, steward observer, overt observer, and covert observer, to measure the effect of experimenter presence and analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

Full text will be available after publication in May.

TEDx Glasgow University: Reimagining Public Spaces

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Julie

This talk discusses our ongoing work to re-appropriate public spaces through digital interactive art. The Public and Performative Interaction Group recently organised a workshop that brought together artists, designers, and computing scientists for a two-day event. Our Goal: to create a working prototype of an interactive installation in just two days. Over the course of the workshop, we developed a concept, implemented the interface, and deployed this on the University of Glasgow Campus. Our untitled piece brought light, play, and interaction to a relatively derelict and empty space on campus, bringing new life and new ideas to the digital urban landscape.

Sunken Ripples: Playful Interaction in an Underwater World

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Julie

We recently completed two showings of the Sunken Ripples Interactive Experience, where a spherical display acts as a portal to an underwater world. During Sunken Ripples, audience members can interact with the sphere to control the jellyfish creatures on the IMAX screen. Small interactions on the sphere ripple out into huge proportions in this playful installation.

SIPS@CHI

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Julie

This year the SIPS project will be presenting an Interactivity Exhibit and an alt.chi paper at CHI 2015. We’re very excited to bring the sphere to new places and share some of our experiences completing evaluations in public spaces.

Deep Cover HCI: A Case for Covert Research in HCI

Julie R. Williamson and Daniel Sundén

The growing popularity of methodologies that turn “to the wild” for real world data creates new ethical issues for the HCI community. For investigations questioning interactions in public or transient spaces, crowd interaction, or natural behaviour, uncontrolled and uninfluenced (by the experimenter) experiences represent the ideal evaluation environment. We argue that covert research can be completed rigorously and ethically to expand our knowledge of ubiquitous technologies. Our approach, which we call Deep Cover HCI, utilises technology-supported observation in public spaces to stage completely undisturbed experiences for evaluation. We complete studies without informed consent and without intervention from an experimenter in order to gain new insights into how people use technology in public settings. We argue there is clear value in this approach, reflect on the ethical issues of such investigations, and describe our ethical guidelines for completing Deep Cover HCI Research.

Multi-Player Gaming on Spherical Displays – Interactivity

Julie R. Williamson, John Williamson, Daniel Sundén, Jay Bradley

Players can crowd around the sphere to play a classic volley game together.

Spherical displays offer unique affordances for multi-player games and playful interactions in social spaces. The shape of a spherical display allows users to face each other and maintain eye contact during interaction, creating a different social dynamic than at a flat display. There is also no intrinsically defined front or centre of the display, offering different views from different viewing angles. This creates shared and private areas of the display given users’ varying perspectives. Trajectory based games have a dramatically different experience when played on a spherical surface. Side-scrolling games are also exciting on a spherical surface, becoming “rotating” games where users’ action affect others playing at different points around the screen. This Interactivity exhibit showcases two multi-player games that specifically exploit the affordances of a spherical display in a social setting.

BBC Click: Glasgow’s Digital Creativity

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Julie

The Public and Performative Interaction has been discussed on the BBC Click Programme about Glasgow’s Digital Creativity. Julie Williamson’s work on engagement with public displays explores how we can create the best possible user experience on spherical touch sensitive displays. Evaluating engagement and experience is vital to ensure the novel technologies we develop are actually used in practice.

Watch the programme here: BBC Click: Glasgow’s Digital Creativity (featured at 6:35)

For more information about our projects and public engagement, see publicinteraction.co.uk for our latest updates.

#GUArtHack: Rapid Prototyping of Digital Interactive Art for Public Spaces

Posted on January 30, 2015 by Julie

The installation site was a dimly lit walkway set just below a busy pedestrianised street.

In November, Julie Williamson (University of Glasgow) and Audrey O’Brien (Visual Artist) ran a workshop two-day workshop to explore ideas and concepts for a digital art installation for public spaces. The goal was to create and design with concepts such as playfulness, performative interactions, surveillance, touch, and lighting. The only requirement placed on workshop participants was to create a working prototype together during the two-day event. At the end of the workshop, the participants exhibited the final prototype in a pop-up exhibition on the University of Glasgow campus.

The participants developed the concept and prototyped the installation over the two-day workshop.

Over two days, this micro-residency brought together artists, designers and computing scientists from a wide variety of backgrounds. The workshop began with an exploration of the installation site. The installation was staged in a dark space beneath one of the University building, positioned below a busy pedestrianised walkway. The final product was composed of six touch sensitive pendulums arranged around a spherical display. Touching the pendulums produced music, with each pendulum creating different visualisations on the sphere. The video below showcases the final installation from the pop-up exhibit.

The installation involved a spherical display surrounded by touch sensitive pendulums. Touching the pendulums made music and flowing graphics from the sphere.

SIPS Workshop #1 from daniel sunden on Vimeo.

Sunken Ripples: A New Interactive Experience

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Julie

What an exciting time to play with technology and interactive experiences. We are delighted to be contributing to the Glasgow Film Festival with Sunken Ripples, an experimental interactive installation. This work is part of the EPSRC SIPS project in collaboration with Pufferfish Ltd.

25th of February, showings at 18:00 and 19:30, Glasgow IMAX

Come experience the exciting cutting edge technology of an interactive spherical display as part of a new kind audiovisual performance. For the first time ever, a spherical display will be joined with the IMAX screen to create an immersive and playful experience in an underwater landscape. Join us in the world of Sunken Ripples, where interaction and touch on the spherical display ripple into huge proportions.

This event is brought to you by the University of Glasgow Public and Performative Interaction Group.

Tickets are available for FREE at the IMAX from 16:00 on the day of the performance.

SICSA Micro Residency for Digital Interactive Art

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Julie

Preparations are underway to create a digital art installation during a two-day micro residency.

We are busy organising SICSA’s first micro-residency, aiming to bring together artists, designers, and computing science researchers to create a piece of digital interactive art over a two day workshop.

The goal of this two-day workshop is to explore ideas and concepts for a public digital art installation, creating and designing with concepts such as playfulness, performative interactions, surveillance, touch, and lighting.

You’re Invited – Pop-up Exhibit

As part of the event, we will deploy our creation in a pop-up exhibition on the University of Glasgow campus. The deployment will be experimental and created solely during the two day event. The exhibit will take place in the outdoor area in front of the SAWB building from 4:30 PM on November 7th (building D20, map available at http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_1887_en.pdf)

For more information about the micro residency, please visit: publicinteraction.co.uk/micro-residency/

We're gathering everything from Play-Doh to interactive lights to create something for public spaces.

We’re gathering everything from Play-Doh and paint, to interactive lights and embedded electronics to create an installation for a public space.

CHI Interactivity 2014 in Interactions Magazine

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Julie

After a successful Interactivity at CHI 2014, Steven Benford and I were given the opportunity to feature some of the most exciting and visually compelling Interactivity exhibits in Interactions Magazine.

Interactivity is a unique forum of the ACM CHI Conference that showcases hands-on demonstrations, novel interactive technologies, and artistic installations. At CHI 2014, we aimed to create a “one of a CHInd” Interactivity experience with more than 60 interactive exhibits to highlight the diverse group of computer scientists, sociologists, designers, psychologists, artists, and many more that make up the CHI community.

GaussBricks – Rong-Hao Liang, Liwei Chan, Hung-Yu Tseng, Han-Chih Kuo, Da-Yuan Huang, De-Nian Yang, Bing-Yu Chen.

Rainbowfish – Grosse-Puppendahl, T., Beck, S., Wilbers, D., Zeiss, S., von Wilmsdorff, J., and Kuijper, A.

TransWall – Heo, H., Park, H-K, Kim, S., Chung, J., Lee, G., and Lee, W.

The Vocal Chorder – Unander-Scharin, C., Unander- Scharin, A., and Höök, K.

Check out the complete article on the ACM DL.

Future Immersive Interaction Group

Julie R. Williamson, Lecturer in HCI

Author Archives: Julie