Jorge Cardoso's Blog - Ubiquity

In Traction: How to efficiently perform a literature review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:41:10 -0400

A good text on literature review methodology. It may seem obvious at the end and you might feel that you already do most those steps, but I think it is still important to see it all layed down and structured on a text like this.Â

Secrets to success and fatal flaws: the design of large-display groupware - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:27:12 -0400

The paper surveys large-display systems that use wall displays to find the main factors that lead

to the success or failure in usage of the system. Seven groupware systems were analyzed:

Notification Collage, MessyBoard, Plasma Poster, Semi-Public Displays, BlueBoard, MERBoard

and Awareness Module.Â

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Blind people can't use touch screens

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:22:27 -0500

I had never thought about this until I read this article on MSNBC: Stevie Wonder: Touch-screens alienate blind.

The problem, of course, aren't the touch screens per se, but the fact that usually touch screen application don't allow for any other input mechanism -- think of the iPhone.

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Using camera-phones to interact with context-aware mobile services - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:59:44 -0500

Here's another review...

Using camera-phones to interact with context-aware mobile services

In this technical report [Toye et al., 2004], the authors present the results from a study on a new interaction technique that uses camera-phones and visual tags to interact with public displays.

The technique consists in using visual codes in printed form or in dynamic displays that a camera-phone can recognize. The mobile phone communicates with a computer so that when a user 'clicks' on a tag, the display can reflect that action as if a button was pressed, for example. Also, the mobile can be used as a secondary display and also store information and personal data that is sent automatically to create a personal interface.

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Touch & Interact: Touch-based Interaction of Mobile Phones with Displays - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:04:02 -0500

Here's my review...

Touch & Interact: Touch-based Interaction of Mobile Phones with Displays

In [Hardy and Rukzio, 2008], the authors present an interaction technique-Touch & Interact-with public displays using a mobile phone to touch the display.

The technique uses a mesh of RFID tags (10x10) on a projection surface. The mobile phone is capable of reading the tags and communicates the tag id, via Bluetooth, to a computer that controls the projections. The location of each tag is predefined, so its possible to determine the location on the screen that was touched by the phone.

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The Design Space of Ubiquitous Mobile Input - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:37:01 -0500

Here's my review. Comments are appreciated...

The Design Space of Ubiquitous Mobile Input

[Ballagas et al., 2008] presents a design space of mobile input techniques with five dimensions: graphical subtask (position, orient and select), dimensionality, relative vs absolute movement, interaction style (direct vs indirect) and feedback (continuous vs discrete).

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Hybrid Recommender Systems: Survey and Experiments - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:48:14 -0500

Here's my review. Comments are appreciated...

Hybrid Recommender Systems: Survey and Experiments

In [Burke, 2002], Robin Burke makes a survey of existing recommender techniques and systems and he also presents and evaluates a hybrid recommender system.

Burke defines a recommender system as "any system that produces individualized recommendations as output or has the effect of guiding the user in a personalized way to interesting or useful objects in a large space of possible options." Put differently, a recommender system assists users in finding relevant information (for the specific user) from a large information space.

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Engaging with a Situated Display via Picture Messaging - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:49:44 -0500

This is my review. Comments are appreciated...

Engaging with a Situated Display via Picture Messaging

This paper [Martin et al., 2006] describes and early investigation in the use of text and picture messaging as an interaction mechanism for situated displays.

The system was called Joe Blogg and was "designed to be interacted with at moments of 'pause'." It basically consisted of a projection which displayed text and pictures sent by people. The system was installed in a reception area of the Bartlett School of Architecture since it was an area of great movement and so propitious to be seen and interacted with by a lot of people.

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Enticing People to Interact With Large Public Displays in Public Spaces - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:47:00 -0500

This is my review. Comments are appreciated...

Enticing People to Interact With Large Public Displays in Public Spaces

In [Brignull and Rogers, 2003] the authors address the problem of overcoming the resistance people have in interacting with a public display.

The goal of their research is

"to examine:

the flow of people around public displays

the level and types of interaction around displays

the transitions that occur between types of interaction

factors that cause social awkwardness and embarrassment around public displays"

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Ambient Displays and Mobile Devices for the Creation of Social Architectural Spaces - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:42:00 -0500

This is my review of the paper. Comments are appreciated...

Ambient Displays and Mobile Devices for the Creation of Social Architectural Spaces

[Streitz et al., 2003] presents the Hello.Wall-an ambient display designed to support informal communication within a corporate building.

The authors state that they wanted to investigate how ambient displays could support informal processes and communication. To this purpose, they developed the Hello.Wall system.

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Proactive Displays: Supporting Awareness in Fluid Social Environments - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:33:00 -0500

This is my review of this paper. Comments are appreciated...

Proactive Displays: Supporting Awareness in Fluid Social Environments

In [McDonald et al., 2008], the authors evaluated a set of proactive display applications designed to augment and extend the social actions and interactions that usually occur in an academic conference.

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Aware Community Portals: Shared Information Appliances for Transitional Spaces -- Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:19:00 -0500

This is my review of the paper. Comments are appreciated...

Aware Community Portals: Shared Information Appliances for Transitional Spaces

[Sawhney et al., 2001] describes the design of an experimental project (a prototype) that explores the awareness of information and of the activity patterns of other people (regarding the reading of the displayed information) within a community environment at the MIT. More specifically, the purpose of the prototype was to study "peripheral interfaces that can be used in a casual manner in transitional places" to interact with information in a projected video display.

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Designing Everyday Computational Things - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:55:00 -0500

I have been reading a PhD thesis by Johan Redstrom: "Designing Everyday Computational Things". This was written in 2001 but it describes various still interesting projects. I have somewhat mixed feelings about this text. I find all the examples very interesting but sometimes its hard to 'see' the unifying thread among all of them. The main question seems a bit vague to me.

As I read this, I often remembered "Digital Ground" by Malcolm McCullough (see my review). Although not explicit, I think Redstrom's intentions touchs many of McCullough's points. In virtually all of Redstrom's examples, place, and how people related to place is a central question.

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Digital Ground - Review

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:25:10 -0400

I have just finished reading Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing by Malcolm McCullough. I'll try to give here a short review.

The books' main idea is the need for interaction design and the need to always take place into account when designing ubiquitous systems.

Chapter 1 - Interactive Futures - talks about what the meaning of the term ubiquitous and how other technologial-oriented terms like cyberspace have never quite hold up to the myth. "[...] Weiser defined ubiquitous computing as 'hundreds of computers per person'", "Many of these terms have become overexposed.", "[...] ubiquity [...] now is applied to all manner of globalizing technology."

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Stories In Place - Future Places

nospam@example.com (Jorge Cardoso) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:59:46 -0400

“Stories in Place” is about creating a shared, collaborative, situated story. Starting with a small initial phrase, users are asked to contribute their own words in order to complete a story, which is presented in a public screen or projection surface.

Collaboration is simply a matter of sending a text message via bluetooth to a specific device -- StoriesInPlace. Each time a user gives a contribution, the story up to that moment is sent back to his mobile device, so that he automatically holds a copy of his contribution and of those before him.

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