2011

From February 18th to February 19th 2011, people with background in tangible interaction, surface computing, art and music met at the 3rd “Erfinderworkshop” at the Bauhaus University Weimar. It was organized by the “Arbeitskreis für Be-Greifbare Interaktion in Gemischten Wirklichkeiten”. Here, special credits go to the host Jens Geelhaar and staffs Jan Dittrich, Matthias Breuer, Katja Knecht, and Sonja Hartmann (all Bauhaus University, Weimar). Hence, our working group was represented by Roman Raedle.

At the workshop, then, the participants were split into two groups; a narrative group and a hands-on group. Participants of the narrative group first got an introduction into “writing narratively” and then each of them had to compose a tale with focus on “Stadterfahrung”. The second group had to craft devices useful in urban areas. As follows you will get a visual impression of the workshop including one of the outcomes.

The participants of the workshop are listening to Jan Dittrich (Bauhaus University, Weimar). He was one of the instructors who gave all the hands-on people a brief introduction to this part of the workshop event.

The picture above shows an outcome of one of the hands-on group. It comprises concepts that bring digital wiki to the physical and thus introduces a more tangible wiki, so called tiki device. For the device see Weimar labeled box. Such tiki devices are spread across the globe, available in different cities and buildings and accessible freely to public. Here, a user can place an arbitrary artifact on the tiki device and can furthermore enter information belonging to the artifact via multi-touch (roughly sketched by a hooked iPhone). Later on, the artifact will be scanned in 3D and reproduced physically at all interconnected tiki locations using a 3D printer. Then, all users at the different cities are able to experience information not only digitally but also physically having the printed but real artifact at hand.

This was just a short wrap-up of the “3rd Erfinderworkshop” in Weimar. To get more information about the workshop, all of its outcomes (not yet available) and the “Arbeitskreis für Be-Greifbare Interaktion in Gemischten Wirklichkeiten” visit the “AK GI” website (German only).

http://dimeb.informatik.uni-bremen.de/interaktion/

See you at the “4th Erfinderworkshop” (tba)

We are proud to announce that our group has been very successful in submissions to this year’s CHI conference: At CHI 2011 in Vancouver BC in May 2011, we will present: two full papers, one entry to the student research competition, and two workshop papers to the CHI workshop on Distributed User Interfaces.

The scope of our contributions has been particularly broad this year, ranging from Facet-Streams (a tabletop system for collaborative search designed and developed together with Microsoft Research Cambridge) or API usability evaluation with concept maps to cognitive studies about the effect of visual grids on memory. One of the accepted papers for DUI is the result of a cooperation with our colleagues from the Media Interaction Lab at Hagenberg, Austria. Some of the papers and videos are already available on our publications page.

If you would like to meet the authors, all of them (Jens Gerken, Hans-Christian Jetter, Svenja Leifert, Harald Reiterer, Michael Zöllner) will be attending CHI.

See you in Vancouver!

Update 23.03.2011:
We have just received exciting news from CHI 2011. Our “Facet-Streams” paper has been selected as one of the top 5% of papers and notes at CHI 2011 and has received an “honorable mention” award. Let me use this opportunity to thank our collaborators and all involved students again for their part in this great outcome. We feel proud and honored to be highlighted so prominently at CHI 2011!

Today, we moved into an exposed room inside the library of the University of Konstanz. In the next months we will set up a “Living Lab” in this public space to demonstrate and evaluate concepts of the library of the future. In a first step, a multi touch table has been arranged. Several promising devices will follow in the near future. Through the continuous communication “in the wild” between library users and researchers, it will be possible to develop jointly a trendsetting vision.

In our course “Blended Interaction”, Master’s students Michael Zöllner and Stephan Huber have been working on a very different approach to use the Microsoft Kinect. Since we liked their project so much and their helmet-mounted Kinect is such an eye-catcher (check out the video), we asked them to write about it for our blog. Here is what they wrote:

NAVI (Navigational Aids for the Visually Impaired) is a student project aiming at improving indoor navigation for visually impaired by leveraging the Microsoft Kinect camera, a vibrotactile waistbelt and markers from the AR-Toolkit.While the “white cane” is a good tool to improve navigation for visually impaired, it has certain drawbacks such as a small radius or that it just detects objects that are on the ground (during typical use).We wanted to augment the visually impaired person’s impression of a room or building by providing vibro-tactile feedback that reproduces the room’s layout.

For this, depth information from the Kinect is mapped by our software onto three pairs of Arduino LilyPad vibration motors located at the left, center and right of the waist. These pairs of vibration motors are hot glued into a fabric waist belt and connected to an Arduino 2009 board. To increase the impact of the vibration motor they were put into the cap of a plastic bottle. The Arduino in the waist belt is connected via usb to a laptop that was mounted onto a special backpack-construction, which has holes for cables and fan.

To support point-to-point navigation usually a seeing-eye dog is used. This dog however must be trained for certain routes, costs a lot of money and gets tired soon. In certain research projects GPS is used to provide this point-to-point navigation, however GPS is not applicable for indoor scenarios.

We wanted to utilize the rgb camera of the Kinect, so we put several markers of the AR-Toolkit on the walls and doors of our building thereby modeling a certain route from one room to another. The markers are tracked continuously all along the way and our software provides synthesized auditory navigation instructions for the person. These navigation instructions vary based on the distance of the person to the marker (which we get from Kinect’s depth camera). So for example, if you walk towards a door the output will be “Door ahead in 3”, “2”, “1”, “pull the door” where each part of the information depends on the distance to the marker on the door.

The software is written with C#/.NET. We used the MangedOpenNI (https://github.com/kobush/ManagedOpenNI) wrapper for the Kinect and the managed wrapper of the ARToolkitPlus (http://code.google.com/p/comp134artd) for marker tracking. Voice synthesis is done using Microsoft’s Speech API (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/speech/default). All input streams are glued together using Reactive Extensions for .NET (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/ee794896).

Kasper Hornbaek will give an interesting talk about the challenges in evaluating information visualization. 
Prof. Hornbaek's research interests lie with Human-Computer Interaction in general and evaluation methods, interaction techniques and information visualization in particular. During his research, he has conducted numerous empirical studies, for example regarding the usability of focus+context techniques such as fisheye or overview+detail. He is part of the European COST Action IC0904 (Towards the integration of transectorial IT design and evaluation) and has been a reviewer on many high-profile conferences and journals in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, such as CHI Conference and the International Journal of Human Computer Studies.

Web/Url: http://diku.dk/ansatte/beskrivelse/?id=141851&f=3

We are proud and honored to announce that our Facet-Streams system has received an “Honorable Mention” award at ACM CHI 2011.

About Facet-Streams:

Facet-Streams is a prototype application for the Microsoft Surface tabletop computer. The application enables a group of users (e.g. a family) to simultaneously search hotels in the hotel data of HolidayCheck and to agree on a holiday destination. Users can use multitouch and glass tokens to enter their individual preferences into the application.

“Facet-Streams” was designed and implemented by Hans-Christian Jetter, Jens Gerken und Michael Zöllner at the Human-Computer Interaction Group of Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer at the University of Konstanz in cooperation with Natasa Milic-Frayling of the Integrated Systems Group of Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Quote from the mail of the “Best of CHI” committee:

Congratulations!  On behalf of SIGCHI and the CHI 2011 Committee, we would like to formally notify you that your accepted Paper has received an “Honorable Mention” award.  The CHI 2011 Papers and Notes Committee selected only the top 5% of Papers and Notes submissions to receive the “Honorable Mention” designation.  Quite an achievement. [...] Congratulations to you all and thank you for advancing the field of Human-Computer Interaction! [...]

Now that’s a really nice way to say thank you! 

In the light of this award, we are happy that our submissions to CHI 2011 were even more successful than we already knew…

From our students Michael Zöllner and Stephan Huber the inventors of NAVI:

Our NAVI project produced quite a lot of media response in the last weeks. It was really overwhelming. We’re currently at approx. 90.000 youtube hits and our webserver stats went sky high. Thanks to all who made this possible!

Apart from many blogs around the world, including such popular ones like Engadget, Gizmodo ES, Slashgear or PCWorld, we were also featured in one of the biggest german newspapers FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and one of the biggest german computer magazines c’t.

We were really speechless when suddenly Microsoft was calling, inviting us to their famous MIX conference in Las Vegas to showcase our system. Yes it’s true. Our NAVI prototype will be featured at this years’s MIX conference in Las Vegas (April 12-14). So if you’re there, let’s take a ride with our Kinect helmet.

If you want to follow NAVI on the MIX, here is the url to the video stream (Wednesday, 11.00 AM PST): http://channel9.msdn.com/events/ch9live/mix11

Video: Kinect als Navigationshilfe für Sehbehinderte – MIX11 

Die Vorbesprechung für Seminare, Praktika und Vorlesungen der Arbeitsgruppe HCI findet am 13.04. im Raum C252 statt. Uhrzeit 12:00 - 13:00. Wenn Sie sich für eine oder mehrere unserer Veranstaltungen interessieren, ist dies eine gute Gelegenheit, mehr Details zu erfahren. 

Physical Qualities of Interaction

While there are well established and widely accepted interaction concepts for the personal computer world, a comprehensive interaction concept for the often predicted aera of ubiquitous computing is still missing. When computers and digital artifacts mix with our physical environment, physicality seems to be a promising candidate to form the basis of such an interaction concept. In this talk, I will show some of our investigations into the design space between physical and digital worlds, and we can speculate together, where this may lead.

Andreas Butz received his PhD on intelligent graphics generation from Saarland University, Germany in 1997. He worked as a PostDoc in HCI at Columbia University, New York, founded a company in 2000, which now feeds 17 employees, returned to academia with an Emmy Noether grant from DFG in 2003 and was appointed a tenured professor at the University of Munich in 2004.

Web/Url: http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/team/andreas.butz/

Web/Url: http://www.dagstuhl.de/de/programm/kalender/semhp/?semnr=11171

Today, we installed two wall-mounted short-throw projectors in our living lab in the library of the University of Konstanz. The projections of both devices are unified into a single planar projection that functions as a large wall-sized display and allows standard keyboard and mouse input at the moment. We plan to integrate further interaction modalities (e.g. pen input) in near future to support co-located collaborative work. More on this in the next weeks. Stay tuned to get the latest news of the project “Blended Library”.

Apps – Spielerei oder ein neues Paradigma?
Unter Apps versteht man heute meist Anwendungen für mobile Endgeräte, wie Smartphones oder Tablet-Computer, die per Download aus dem Internet direkt auf dem Endgerät installiert werden können. Als Quellen für solche Apps dienen meist Onlineshops, etwa z. B. der App Store von Apple oder der Android Market von Google. Dabei reicht die Vielfalt der Apps von einfachen Werkzeugen über Spielanwendungen bis hin zu umfangreichen Programmpaketen. Welche Bedeutung haben Apps, wie haben sie die SW-Entwicklung verändert und wie kann man sie auch in professionellen Einsatzbereichen nutzbringend einsetzen? Dies ist das spannende Themenfeld unserer nächsten Arbeitskreissitzung.

Web/Url: http://www.akswt-konstanz.de/2012/01/24/28-treffen/

Prof. Reiterer will give a keynote talk on the project Blended Library at the ELAG conference at the National Technical Library in Prague, Czech Republic.

Abstract
In the future physical libraries will have still great impact for knowledge work. The reason for it is, that many interesting objects are still not digitally available and the importance of libraries as physical and social place to encounter and to learn collaboratively is unchallenged. The goal of the talk is to present the idea of a project called “Blended Library”. The aim of the project is to develop new concepts to support the information seeking process and collaboration inside of the physical library of the future. Inside of the Blended Library, users will find novel ways for knowledge work and intermediation. This will be realized by the extensive application of new interactive devices and prospective visualizations that “blend” the real and virtual features of libraries. Beside the traditional terminal-based workplaces, particularly novel forms of interaction - embodied for example through multi touch tabletops, interactive wall displays or mobile devices - will be provided, especially for information seeking and group work. The intention behind the introduction of these technologies is to support the library users during the exploration of the capacious media space of the library in an intuitive and natural manner. During the project, concepts will be developed and implemented as prototypes, which will be evaluated in realistic scenarios and contexts. The demonstration of their value will be carried out in terms of a marquee project or best-practice example. In particular, this will be realized with the real operation of selected concepts as “living lab” inside the library. Hence, the possible applications of the established ideas and concepts in future libraries will be demonstrated and their feasibility and serviceability will be analysed. The project is funded by the "Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst" Baden-Württemberg in Germany.

Web/Url: http://elag2011.techlib.cz/en/799-blended-libraries

Corresponding Project: Blended Library

Der Vortrag stellt neue Formen der Mensch-Computer Interaktion vor. Sie basieren auf neuen kognitionswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen aus dem Bereich Embodied Cognition, welche die Bedeutung aller Sinnesmodalitäten und der körperlichen Erfahrung für die kognitive Entwicklung unterstreichen. Wir greifen diese Erkenntnisse auf und entwickeln Benutzungsschnittstellen, die sich an einer realitätsbasierten Interaktion orientieren. Neben einer multimodalen Interaktion spielt hier vor vor allem begreifbare Interaktion, die durch das Verschneiden von gegenständlichen Objekten mit digitalen Objekten entsteht, eine wichtige Rolle. Aber auch die soziale Interaktion spielt bei der Gestaltung eine wichtige Rolle. Im Vortrag werden anhand von einigen ausgewählen Projekten die Ideen veranschaulicht und die wesentlichen Konzepte anhand von Videos präsentiert.

Web/Url: http://www.wand5.de/wand5cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=327&Itemid=397

Abstract
Until now, interactive visualization techniques are often restricted to traditional input and output devices, which are typically limited to one (larger) screen operated by mouse and keyboard interaction. To find more efficient and user-friendly ways of exploring large information spaces, the User Interface & Software Engineering group of the University of Magdeburg (Germany) is conducting research on natural interaction in multiple-display environments. Thereby, we focus on interactive surfaces, in particular tabletops and mobile devices, which are operated by touch, gesture, pen or other types of tangible interaction. The talk will outline two avenues of current research. One is the promising combination of pen and multi-touch gestures for graph editing on interactive displays. Using the example of node-link diagrams, it will be explained how user-elicited gesture sets for editing diagrams, multitouch gestures for exploring and layouting them and off-screen visualizations for solving the focus and context problem can be used to tackle typical challenges. As a second project, tangible magic lenses will be introduced in the talk. These are optically tracked, lightweight, passive displays that provide elegant three-dimensional exploration of rich datasets. This can either be volumetric, layered, zoomable, or temporal information spaces, which are mapped onto the physical volume above a tabletop. By moving one or multiple hand-held magic lenses through the volume, corresponding data is displayed, thus serving as a window into virtuality. Various interaction techniques are explained, which especially utilize the lens’ height in a novel way and provide a rich vocabulary of physical gestures. These projects are examples of combining modern techniques from the field of human-computer interaction with existing visualization approaches.

Speaker Bio
Raimund Dachselt is a professor at the University of Magdeburg in Germany, where he heads the User Interface & Software Engineering group. After studying computer science with a focus on human-computer interaction and information visualization in Dresden and Glasgow, he joined the Multimedia Technology Group at Dresden University of Technology, where he received his PhD in 2004. Within his doctoral thesis he developed a component-based architecture and 3D widgets for interactive three-dimensional applications (www.contigra.com). As a post-doctoral researcher and academic assistant in Dresden he conducted research on zoomable user interfaces and faceted browsing for personal information and media management. In 2007 Raimund Dachselt started building his own research group at the University of Magdeburg. Thereby, the research focus is on natural user interfaces of the future. This includes the development of visualization and interaction techniques for a seamless interaction in environments with multiple displays and devices. Several interaction modalities are currently investigated, among them multitouch and pen interaction as well as tangible and gaze-based interaction. Dr. Dachselt is a member of the IEEE Computer Society, ACM SIGCHI and SIGMM. He has co-organized several international workshops on the design and development of virtual environments, mixed reality user interfaces, realtime interactive systems as well as on mobile, ubiquitous projection. He has extensively served as a program committee member, organizer and reviewer of international conferences and workshops. In April 2011, he was appointed full professor at the Otto-von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg.

Abstract
What does the future hold for search user interfaces? Following on a recently completed book on this topic, this talk identifies some important trends in the use of information technology and suggest how these may affect search in future. This includes is a notable trend towards more "natural'' user interfaces, a trend towards social rather than solo usage of information technology, and a trend in technology advancing the integration of massive quantities of user behavior and large-scale knowledge bases. These trends are, or will be, interweaving in various ways, which will have some interesting ramifications for search interfaces, and should suggest promising directions for research.

Speaker Bio
Dr. Marti Hearst is a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. She received BA, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and was a Member of the Research Staff at Xerox PARC from 1994 to 1997. A primary focus of Dr. Hearst's research is user interfaces for search. She just completed the first book on the topic of Search User Interfaces and she has invented or participated in several well-known search interface projects including the Flamenco project that investigated and the promoted the use of faceted metadata for collection navigation. Professor Hearst's other research areas include computational linguistics, information visualization, and analysis of social media. Prof. Hearst has received an NSF CAREER award, an IBM Faculty Award, a Google Research Award, an Okawa Foundation Fellowship, two Excellence in Teaching Awards, and has been principle investigator for more than $3M in research grants.

Corresponding Slides: Slides

Web/Url: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hearst/

Video: Video Stream (Login required)

Abstract
An almost explosive growth of complexity puts pressure on people in their everyday doings. Digital artifacts and systems are at the core of this development. How should we handle complexity aspects when designing new interactive devices and systems? In this article we begin an analysis of interaction complexity. We portray different views of complexity; we explore, not only negative aspects of complexity, but also positive, making a case for the existence of benign complexity. We argue that complex interaction is not necessarily bad, but designers need a deeper understanding of interaction complexity and need to treat it in a more intentional and thoughtful way. We examine interaction complexity as it relates to different loci of complexity: internal, external, and mediated complexity. Our purpose with these analytical exercises is to pave the way for design that is informed by a more focused and precise understanding of interaction complexity.

Speaker Bio
Erik Stolterman is Professor of Informatics and Director of the Human Computer Interaction Program at the School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also co-Editor-in-Chief for the ACM Interactions magazine and an Editor for the Design Theory book series for MIT Press. Stolterman’s main work is within interaction design, philosophy and theory of design, information technology and society, information systems design, and philosophy of technology. Stolterman has published a large number of articles and five books, including “Thoughtful Interaction Design” (2004, MIT Press) and “The Design Way” (2nd Edition to be published in 2011, MIT Press). Stolterman was, before coming to Indiana University, Professor and Chair at the Department of Informatics, Umeå University, Sweden. Apart from his scholarly work, Stolterman is engaged in consulting, seminars, and workshops with organizations and companies.

Corresponding Slides: Slides

Web/Url: https://www.soic.indiana.edu/all-people/profile.html?profile_id=305

Video: Video Stream (Login required)

We are proud to announce that our group will take part at this year’s INTERACT 2011 conference in Lisbon/Portugal in September 2011. At  this conference, we will present one full paper, one short paper, and one interactive demo. In addition we will attend the international workshop on encouraging serendipity in interactive systems.

The scope of our contributions has been particularly broad, ranging from "Hidden Details of Negotiation: The Mechanics of Reality-Based Collaboration in Information Seeking" over "AffinityTable – A Hybrid Surface for Supporting Affinity Diagramming" and "NAVI – A Proof-of-Concept of a Mobile Navigational Aid for Visually Impaired Based on the Microsoft Kinect" to “Interactive Reading: Serendipity in Context of the Blended Library”.

If you would like to meet the authors, some of them (Mathias Heilig, Florian Geyer, Stephan Huber, Roman Rädle, Harald Reiterer) will be in Lisbon.

Hope to see you there!

Two full papers from our group were accepted for presentation at this year’s Mensch & Computer conference. The largest german conference on Human-Computer Interaction will take place in Chemnitz, Germany from September 11th to September 14th.

We will present one paper on “content-sensitive navigation in traffic control” (Inhaltssensitive Navigation in der Verkehrsleitzentrale) and one paper on “hybrid support for collaborative design techniques” (Ein hybrider Ansatz zur Unterstützung kollaborativer Designtechniken).

We are looking forward to an interesting conference and to meeting our colleges from the german HCI community!

This week, on June 28th, the project Holistic Workspace was presented at the AUTOMATION 2011 conference, in Baden-Baden, Germany.

The talk was very well received. If you are interested to know more about the project Holistic Workspace, please contact us.

Our group will present one full paper entitled Designing Reality-Based Interfaces for Creative Group Work at the 8th ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference that will take place at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, USA from 3rd to 6th November 2011.
We are also proud and honored that our contribution was nominated for the Best Contribution to Creative Communication Award.

Started in 1993, the biannual ACM Creativity & Cognition (C&C) conference series brings together artists and scientists, designers and educators, researchers and practitioners. This year’s theme is Creativity and Technology. Our contribution is a full paper on our research in supporting collaborative design activities with reality-based and tangible interfaces. Based on an observational study grounded in the realitybased interaction framework, we identified power vs. reality tradeoffs that can be addressed to find a close fit to embodied design practice. Using this knowledge, we designed and implemented a digital workspace for supporting affinity diagramming. Its hybrid interaction techniques combine digital pen & paper with an interactive table and tangible tokens. An additional vertical display is used to support reflection-in-action and for enhancing discussion and coordination. A preliminary user study confirmed the applicability of our tradeoffs and the general acceptance of the tool design. We look forward to an interesting conference and an exiting conference venue!

A video of our prototype implementation is availabe online.

Our poster entitled NAVI – A Proof-of-Concept of a Mobile Navigational Aid for Visually Impaired Based on the Microsoft Kinect won the Best Poster Award at the INTERACT 2011 conference in Lisbon, Portugal. It was selected by the jury as the best of the 54 posters that were presented at the conference.

We are invited to give a talk at the 12th BSZ-Kolloquium at the Stuttgart Media University (HdM). The talk is scheduled for September 27th, 2011. Roman Rädle will present the vision of Blended Interaction with help of Blended Library as use case. Further, the progress of the project Blended Library as well as our “Living Lab” will be presented. The talk concludes with an outlook to future work.

EDIT September 29th, 2011: We thank the BSZ Baden-Württemberg for the invitation. About 300 registered people including MWK Baden-Württemberg, library directors (university, regional, and public libraries), and industry and commerce were listening to the talk. It was a pleasure to present and report about the progress of our project Blended Library.

On November 17th 2011, Prof. Gerhard Fischer from the University of Colorado, USA will visit our group. He will give a talk about “A Conceptual Framework for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning at Work”. The talk will take place in Room C252 from 10:15 to 12:00. We cordially invite all students and members of the department!

Talk Announcement
Prof. Gerhard Fischer – A Conceptual Framework for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning at Work

Center for LifeLong Learning & Design (L³D)
Department of Computer Science and Institute of Cognitive Science
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO

http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/

Date: November 17, 2011
Time: 10:15 – 12:00
Room: C252

Abstract

The presentation identifies challenges for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning at Work (CSCL@Work) by arguing that learning at work transcends our current understanding of learning as derived either from school learning or from current practices in adult education.

The presentation develops a number of themes defining a conceptual framework for CSCL@Work including the following: distributed cognition, integration of problem framing and solving, communities of interest, and meta-design, cultures of participation, and social creativity as approaches to learning when the answer is not known. It illustrates the framework with two narratives, identifies some trade-offs and barriers, and reflects on the impact and future of CSCL@Work.

Short Bio

Gerhard Fischer is a Professor of Computer Science, a Fellow of the Institute of Cognitive Science, and the Director of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design (L3D) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the Computer Human Interaction Academy (CHI) and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

His research is focused on: (1) learning, working, and collaborating with new media; (2) human-computer interaction; (3) cognitive science; (4) assistive technologies; and (5) transdisciplinary collaboration and education.

Background Information

Fischer, G. (2011): “A Conceptual Framework for Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning at Work”, in S. Goggins, I. Jahnke & V. Wulf “CSCL at work”, Springer, Heidelberg, 2011 (in press) http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/2011/book-cscl-work.pdf

Fischer, G. (2007): “Designing Socio-Technical Environments in Support of Meta-Design and Social Creativity”, Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL ’2007), Rutgers University, July pp. 1-10; http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/CSCL-2007.pdf

At the 7. World Usability Day (WUD) in Stuttgart the HCI Group is represented by Michael Zöllner and Stephan Huber with their NAVI project. The two will carry along their prototypes and visitors are invited to try it out by theirselves.The event will take place at the 10th of November at Treffpunkt Rotebühlplatz in Stuttgart and lasts from 10AM to 6PM.

The vision and the state of the art of our ongoing project Blended Library will be presented by Prof Reiterer at the 4th Autumn School ”New Services in Library and Information Science” in Bern. At this event the new book “Benutzerorientierte Bibliotheken im Web” will be presented to the public. Our Blended Library project is presented in one of the chapters of this book. For more information see also our publications.

Our paper Designing Reality-Based Interfaces for Creative Group Work which we presented at the 8th ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference in Atlanta, USA was awarded with a Honorable Mention for Best Contribution to Creative Communication. Overall three papers were selected by the jury based on the following criteria: Communication, Creativity, Applicants, Design Innovation, Design for Realization, Design for Use, Value to Society, Performance and Reliability in Use.

The award was presented by Ernest Edmonds and Ben Shneiderman in the closing session of the conference on November 6th.

Winner

Philip Mendels for: Freed: A System for Creating Multiple Views of a Digital Collection during the Design Process (CHI 2011 proceedings)

Honorable Mention

Jelle van Dijk for: NOOT: a tool for sharing moments of reflection during creative meetings

Florian Geyer for: Designing Reality­-Based Interfaces for Creative Group Work

Our research group is featured in the current issue of ACM interactions magazine. Interactions magazine is a mirror on the human-computer interaction and interaction design communities and beyond. The magazine is circulated to approximately 6000 subscribers per issue, which includes all ACM members of SIGCHI. As the third largest ACM publication it has a very large readership.

PDF

Our student project NAVI was finally released as Open Source under the BSD License. You can find it at http://navi.codeplex.com. Feel free to play around with the sources.

Yesterday, we were invited by ict AG and Samsung Electronics GmbH to test one of our Surface 1.0 applications on a SUR40 pre-release unit (Microsoft® Surface® 2.0). The Facet-Streams application, therefore, has been migrated from Microsoft® Surface® 1.0 SDK to Microsoft® Surface® 2.0 SDK with help of Microsoft® Surface® Migration Power Toy and a few manual changes in code. It took less than 30 minutes to fully migrate the application. Then, we tested Facet-Streams for Microsoft® Surface® 2.0 SDK on a SUR40 unit, which worked out very well.

Today, Mahsa Jenabi successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis on “PrIME: Primitive Interaction Tasks for Multi-Display Environments”. Congratulations! We wish her all the best for the future.