CHI Interactivity 2014 in Interactions Magazine

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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.

Spherical Interaction for Public Spaces (SIPS): EPSRC First Grant Scheme

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The SIPS project will design and evaluate interactions on spherical displays in public spaces.

The SIPS project will design and evaluate interactions on spherical displays in public spaces.

It’s an exciting time for public and performative interaction at Glasgow University.  My first EPSRC grant has been funded, the announcement is available now on the EPSRC website.

So watch this space, this grant begins August 1st!

Grant Overview:  Public interactive displays have the potential to significantly enhance the quality of life for people living in future city spaces. However, current public displays and interfaces go unnoticed or completely ignored by the majority of passers-by. This presents a serious problem for the impact and uptake of touch sensitive displays if only a small minority will approach these displays and discover their interactive qualities. Existing approaches to designing and evaluating public displays have not been successful at realising the substantial opportunities that public displays afford. This research addresses this problem by exploiting recent technological developments in curved displays to create socially acceptable and enticing interactions for public spaces.

Curved displays offer exciting opportunities for public interaction that are not possible with flat displays. For example, a cylindrical display mimics the shape and form traditional kiosks for flyers and notices that can be seen in many cities. This kind of display can be placed in a walkway and be viewed from many perspectives. Other non-flat shapes, such as spherical displays, allow multiple users to interact while facing each other and viewing vertical content. Installations where users can see each other and observe others interacting are more encouraging and result in higher rates of interaction than displays where users are unable to observe each other. Another important aspect of a spherical display is that the entire display is never completely visible from one perspective. While areas on the top may be visible to both users vertical areas of the screen are only visible to some. These “private” areas of the display could be exploited to support sharing, ownership, and collaboration on a social display.

Given the new opportunities afforded by curved displays, foundational research is needed to understand how this new technology should be designed for and used in public spaces. There is limited research on interaction for curved surfaces and even less on curved surfaces for public spaces. An important aspect of this research is to develop novel multitouch interaction techniques that exploit the form factor of a curved display for public interaction. This will involve perceptual studies to learn the physical constraints and ergonomics of multitouch gestures on curved surfaces. This research will also explore how novel gestures and physical metaphors can enhance interaction on curved surfaces. This will involve evaluating user perceptions of control and responsiveness on a spherical display, simulating different levels of friction and weight for interactive elements.

Another important aspect of this research involves how curved displays work in real public spaces as compared to flat displays. Little is known about how different interaction styles encourage or discourage continued use of flat or curved public displays. In order to measure these metrics at scale for large numbers of passers-by, new evaluation techniques are needed. This project introduces a novel evaluation technique to capture and analyse pedestrian traffic around public installations. This approach can quantify different metrics of public display usage and enable the collection of large-scale data sets not feasible with traditional observation methods.

Finally, this research also aims to dramatically change the approach to designing public displays by considering context and impact on local spaces. Previous work on public displays has primarily involved flat displays and focused on making displays as noticeable and enticing as possible. This presents the possibility of creating unnecessary or unpleasant distraction and actually making public spaces less enjoyable places to be. This research will not only measure how enticing our displays are but also critically analyse the impact of these displays on the places where they are deployed.

Pervasive Displays 2014: Analysing Pedestrian Traffic Around Public Displays

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The technique visualised pedestrian traffic and can show walking direction, speed, and path curvature.

The technique visualises pedestrian traffic and can show walking direction, speed, and path curvature.

In June 2014, I will present the results of my paper on an evaluation method for evaluating displays in public spaces.  The proposed evaluation technique brings together observational research techniques from sociology with social signal processing to automatically generate behavioural maps of public display usage.  This technique can be used in a variety of contexts to evaluate many different kinds of public displays and is non-intrusive and non-disruptive to the interaction being evaluated.  Another interesting aspect of this approach is that it can capture both interacting users and non-interacting or avoiding passers-by.  Upon publication, all of the data and code used in the paper will be made openly available.

Abstract: This paper presents a powerful approach to evaluating public technologies by capturing and analysing pedestrian traffic using computer vision. This approach is highly flexible and scales better than traditional ethnographic techniques often used to evaluate technology in public spaces. This technique can be used to evaluate a wide variety of public installations and the data collected complements existing approaches. Our technique allows behavioural analysis of both interacting users and non-interacting passers-by. This gives us the tools to understand how technology changes public spaces, how passers-by approach or avoid public technologies, and how different interaction styles work in public spaces. In the paper, we apply this technique to two large public displays and a street performance. The results demonstrate how metrics such as walking speed and proximity can be used for analysis, and how this can be used to capture disruption to pedestrian traffic and passer-by approach patterns.

Download the paper

Enter the Circle: Playful Interaction for Public Spaces

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The display is situated within a circle of interactive boxes.

The display is situated within a circle of interactive boxes.

This week at the University of Glasgow, passers-by may have seen a mysterious installation in the walkway between the Boyd Orr and the Sir Alwyn Williams Building.  The installation involves a spherical touch sensitive display and eight interactive boxes filled with coloured light.  The display is encircled by a ring made up of these boxes.  Passers-by must enter the circle to touch the display and explore the installation’s interactivity.

Each box can be controlled by interacting with the sphere.

Each box can be controlled by interacting with the sphere.

The installation explores issues of playfulness in public spaces, environmental control, and discovery of interactivity.  We have placed the installation in this public space in order to understand how passers-by engage with an unknown interface in a public space, what they do when confronted with something playful in nature, and how they explore its capabilities.

This work comes from a five month collaboration between the University of Glasgow and Pufferfish Ltd in Edinburgh.  The project revolves around understanding how novel display form factors influence how these displays are used in public spaces.

People

Dr. Julie R. Williamson, University of Glasgow
Dr. John Williamson, University of Glasgow
Daniel Sundén, Product Designer
Dr. Jay Bradley, Pufferfish Ltd
Ben Allan, Pufferfish Ltd.

Mobile Social Signal Processing – Capturing Performative Input

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This week, I published an article in LNCS Mobile Social Signal Processing that describes using performative actions as input in mobile settings.  I had never focused on social signal processing in my work until Alessandro came to the University of Glasgow and I realised there was some interesting overlap in multimodal interaction design and social signal processing.

So here is my first article looking at social signal processing for performative interaction.

Capturing Performative Actions for Interaction and Social Awareness

Abstract: Capturing and making use of observable actions and behaviours presents compelling opportunities for allowing end-users to interact with such data and eachother. For example, simple visualisations based on on detected behaviour or context allow users to interpret this data based on their existing knowledge and awarness of social cues. This paper presents one such “remote awareness” application where users can interpret a visualization based on simple behaviours to gain a sense of awareness of other users’ current context or actions. Using a prop embedded with sensors, users could control the visualisation using gesture and voice-based input. The results of this work describe the kinds of performances users generated during the trial, how they imagined the actions of their fellow participants based on the visualisation, and how the props containing sensors were used to support, or in some cases hinder, successful performance and interaction.

Celtic Connections Installation with Pufferfish Ltd

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1016359_10102296579687751_325721798_nAs part of my current project, I am working with Pufferfish Ltd to evaluate spherical displays in public spaces.  One of our exciting installations combines my research and my love of Scottish music.  We’re working with Celtic Connections to install the PufferSphere display in the concert hall for the whole opening weekend of the festival.  It’s an exciting place to be and also my first public engagement since starting my SICSA Fellowship.  It’s been a wild ride but we’ve pulled it off with style.

The official news item…

Computer scientists plan to make Celtic Connection with global project

Visitors to the 21st Celtic Connections festival will have the chance to hold the world in their hands at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall from today (Thursday 16 January).

Researchers from the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science have teamed up with Edinburgh-based display developer Pufferfish Ltd to create an eye-catching illuminated globe which will provide information on 25 of the festival’s top acts.

Celtic Connections globe

Celtic Connections image

A computer-controlled display will project a high-resolution image of a world map onto the 600-mm spherical display’s touch-sensitive surface. Users can ‘spin’ the image, which is marked with the locations of artists’ home cities, and tap on artists’ names to find out more about their work and festival gigs.

In addition to providing an unusual source of useful information to Concert Hall visitors, a set of small cameras placed around the display will provide the research team with feedback on their reactions.

Research associate Dr Julie Williamson, who led the project, said: “This is the result of four months of work to develop the content to show on the PufferSphere display and determine how we could best measure visitors’ responses.

“We’re really interested in finding out more about how technology influences pedestrian traffic in public spaces, a process we call performative interaction. We want to know how long people spend at the display and whether they use it alone or in groups. We wanted to get involved with Celtic Connections because it attracts so many visitors from around the world and we were delighted when they agreed to help.

“We’re planning to continue our research with another public display at the University campus next month.”

Dr Williamson worked on the project with product designer Daniel Sundén and Pufferfish Ltd’s software manager Dr Jay Bradley and sales and marketing manager Ben Allan.

 

News Release:  http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_302743_en.html

 

Software Engineering IT – First Lecture

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Teams must complete a tower design challenge given limited supplies.

Teams must complete a tower design challenge given limited supplies.

This year I am teaching Software Engineering IT, a masters level software engineering course for students without a previous background in computing science.  This is the first course I have ever taught, and I wanted to bring some of my defining experiences at UC Irvine across to my teaching here at Glasgow.  I was amazingly fortunate to take Software Engineering with André van der Hoek, where I was taught software engineering from a design perspective.  This perspective was core to André’s teaching, and I hope I’ve done it justice here and helped spread this mantra that I stand behind.  Although I have now gone off the HCI and sociology deep end, software engineering was one of my favourite topics as an undergrad and André’s course contributed to my love of research and creativity in my work.

For the first lecture of the class, I wanted to drive home some important points about creativity and problem solving in software engineering.  During the lecture, the class was split into teams to participate in a tower building challenge.
An intermediate design for a tower.

An intermediate design for a tower.

The Challenge

Design the tallest possible tower given the materials.

Your tower must be able to support the weight of one large tub of Play-Doh.

Tower will be judged based on functionality (does it support weight?), height, and beauty.

The teams were left with 25 minutes to design and build the best tower possible.  However, the lecture was grounded on some important software engineering concepts that I wanted to highlight with our towers.

Duck Tape?  

I asked the students if they would’ve built better towers if I provided them with the duck tape I had in my box of tricks.  In software engineering, that duck tape is like the library or framework you might have not been aware of or chosen not to use.  In the tower, not using the duck tape as a tool seems silly. In software engineering, use of appropriate tools and frameworks makes an even bigger difference.

What do Towers Look Like?

I also challenged assumptions and design decisions in the tower process to highlight the importance of good requirements.  I changed the challenge at the end by asking for a tower that could suspend from the ceiling.  How many of the designs would still work? What about if when I said tower I really meant bridge?  Would you simply turn the tower sideways as say “this is a bridge” or would you start with a new design?  I wanted to demonstrate that we often re-purpose software and use it in ways it’s not intended because we can, but this leads to lots of headaches down the line.  You wouldn’t just repurpose the tower when it obviously wasn’t fit for purpose, and we shouldn’t do that with software either.  I also touched on the idea that a good tower design might support re-use and extension more easily, which leads to…

Design Patterns for Towers

Towers have design patterns as much a software does.  I demonstrated a simple construction technique for the towers to show the students how much a proven design pattern can improve your final product.  Thus far, I think the best joint for tower building given our material set is to place two dowels end to end, wrap tightly with paper, and secure down with a small amount of Play-Doh.  After showing this technique, we discussed how it might make much stronger and taller towers.  Again, I asked if the students would just augment their design or start fresh given the new knowledge.  Towers have design pattern and so does software, and we’ll be learning and applying them in this course.

I tried to use the tower not only to give a flavour for the level a creativity and reflection I expect during the class, but also to show some hopefully compelling examples of why the intangible or difficult to visualise software pitfalls are important to address in the software engineering process.  I think I am going to really enjoy my first semester of teaching.

Some of the Final Results

A tower with a flag and a plaza.

A tower with a flag and a plaza.

It turns out that adding “Beauty/Creativity” as one of the tower judging criteria led to some very interesting designs.

A tower with circular paper adornments.

A tower with circular paper adornments.

An interesting shape in the middle of the tower.

An interesting shape in the middle of the tower.

A short but strong tower.

A short but strong tower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Special thanks to André van der Hoek and Alex Baker who not only first exposed me to software engineering as design at UCI in 2006 but who also guided and supported me while preparing for this course.

ICMI2013 – Mo!Games: evaluating mobile gestures in the wild

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One of the apps was a mobile game where users had to toss marshmallows onto a target using gestures.

One of the apps was a mobile game where users had to toss marshmallows onto a target using gestures.

This year I attended ICMI 2013 in Sydney, Australia. I presented our full length paper entitled Mo!Games: evaluating mobile gestures in the wild. The paper describes an in the wild study of a mobile application that uses head, wrist, and device-based gestures. The goal of the study was to explore how users performed gesture-based interaction in their everyday lives and how they developed preferences for different gesture styles.

Abstract: The user experience of performing gesture-based interactions in public spaces is highly dependent on context, where users must decide which gestures they will use and how they will perform them. In order to complete a realistic evaluation of how users make these decisions, the evaluation of such user experiences must be completed “in the wild.” Furthermore, studies need to be completed within different cultural contexts in order to understand how users might adopt gesture differently in different cultures. This paper presents such a study using a mobile gesture-based game, where users in the UK and India interacted with this game over the span of 6 days. The results of this study demonstrate similarities between gesture use in these divergent cultural settings, illustrate factors that influence gesture acceptance such as perceived size of movement and perceived accuracy, and provide insights into the interaction design of mobile gestures when gestures are distributed across the body.

Download the Paper