2012

We already got the Microsoft Surface 2.0 (Samsung SyncMaster SUR40), which was delivered by the ict AG. Below are some impressions showing the standard Surface 2.0 Bing application. Stay tuned! 

We are happy to announce that our group will organize a workshop on “Designing Collaborative Interactive Spaces for e-Creativity, e-Science and e-Learning” at this year’s AVI conference in Capri, Italy in May 2012.

Please have a look at the workshop website to learn about the details and see the call for paper.

Selected workshop submissions will be published as extended versions in a special issue of the Springer journal “Personal and Ubiquitous Computing”.

We are happy to announce that TwisterSearch will be presented at the 2nd Workshop on Distributed User Interfaces: Collaboration and Usability (a CHI 2012 Workshop). The workshop will be on May 5th 2012 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas (USA). We are looking forward to meet like-minded researchers and hope for inspiring discussions on DUIs.

The Human-Computer Interaction Group was happy to welcome representatives of the Library of the Züricher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften (ZHAW, Winterthur, CH). They were interested in the vision of the Blended Library and, moreover, had the chance to experience the current state of our research prototypes. We would like to thank our visitors for the inspiring discussion and look forward to further cooperation.

We will present the current semester’s topics for bachelor/master-projects on Wednesday, April 18th from 11:45 – 13:15, in our MediaRoom (C203).

In January 2012 our working group got one of the first Samsung SUR40 (Microsoft Surface 2.0) that were delivered to customers in Germany. We had, therefore, the opportunity to migrate existing Surface 1.0 software developed in the working group of Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer and moreover test the Surface hardware extensively. What concerned us most was the less reliable touch and tag recognition compared the the Microsoft Surface 1.0. Applications that worked very well on the first version of the Surface led to unexpected application behavior on the Surface 2.0. As consequence, it result in worse user experience when interacting with such applications. To get a insight why the tracking is worse than on a Surface 1.0 unit, we installed the Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK. The SDK comes along with sample applications such as the RawImageVisualizer. This application, as the name suggests, displays the raw camera image as output to the user.

As the image exposes the tracking needs to be very sophisticated to separate interaction such as touches or tags from the inhomogeneous background image. The white dots visible in the camera image are grease spots that, furthermore, disturb the tracking. In contrast to the Surface 2.0, the Microsoft Surface 1.0 had a black and homogeneous background image provided that it was calibrated correctly. We couldn’t believe that Samsung and Microsoft are satisfied with such a camera image based on the experiences with our Surface 1.0. Therefore, we decided to call the Samsung Service Hotline to issue a “defect” hardware. A few weeks later, two nice guys showed up with an original Samsung SUR40 calibration board (btw. board is immoderate; calling it calibration poster would be more appropriate, as it is a thin and paper-like material). Nevertheless, they followed the steps proposed by the SUR40 Calibration Tool.

It took about 1 minute to succeed all calibration steps. First the display needs to be clean and without grease spots. Then the calibration board (white side downwards) needs to cover the display completely. Pressing the enter key starts calibration. An audio signal occurs if this step is done (active sound output). Next the black side of the calibration board needs to cover the display. Again, pressing the enter key progresses with calibration and signals audio when completed. Now comparing the raw camera images before and after calibration one can see that the image changed from inhomogeneous to a nicely black and homogeneous background image.

As a consequence of the Surface calibration all of our applications did benefit from a better touch and tag recognition. The applications are more reliable than before. We have to state, however, that the tracking of the Surface 1.0 is still superior to the SUR40 (Surface 2.0). So if you run into similar problems such as flickering tag recognition or unreliable touch tracking a calibration may put things right.

Two short papers from project “Holistic Workspace” were accepted for presentation at this year’s AVI 2012 (Advanced Visual Interfaces) conference. The conference on Human-Computer Interaction will take place in Capri Island (Naples), Italy from May 21th to May 25th. We will present one paper on “Perspective+Detail – a visualization technique for vertically curved displays” and one paper on “Content-aware navigation for large displays in context of traffic control rooms”.

We are looking forward to an interesting conference!

We are happy that 7 contributions from our group were accepted for presentation at this year’s Mensch & Computer conference. The largest German conference on Human-Computer Interaction will be hosted by our group in Konstanz from September 9th to September 12th.

We will present two full papers:

• A Comparison of Spatial Grouping Techniques on Interactive Surfaces
  Höchtl, Anita; Geyer, Florian; Reiterer, Harald
  
• Ein Multi-Focus-View Konzept im Kontext der Verkehrsleitzentrale
  Schwarz, Tobias; Butscher, Simon; Müller, Jens; Reiterer, Harald

one short paper:

• Exploring former interaction qualities for tomorrow’s control room design
  Müller, Jens; Schwarz, Tobias; Butscher, Simon; Reiterer, Harald

and four interactive demos:

• Spatial Grouping on Interactive Surfaces – Bin & Blub
  Höchtl, Anita; Geyer, Florian; Reiterer, Harald
• Design persönlicherer Territorien in musealen Table-Top Anwendungen
  Klinkhammer, Daniel; Tennie, Jan-Oke; Maurer, Steffen; Reiterer, Harald
• TwisterSearch: Supporting Social Search with Tabletop and Mobile Displays
  Rädle, Roman; Jetter, Hans-Christian; Reiterer, Harald
• Augmented Shelf: Digitale Anreicherung von Bibliotheksregalen
  Kleiner, Eike; Schäfer, Benjamin

We are looking forward to an exciting conference and to hosting our colleges from the German HCI community!

Our group contributes two papers and co-organizes a workshop at the NordiCHI 2012 conference which will take place from October 14th to October 17th in Copenhagen, Denmark. NordiCHI is the main Nordic forum for human-computer interaction research, with the conference proceedings published by ACM. The 7th NordiCHI conference is hosted by the IT University Copenhagen.

Florian Geyer will present a full paper on:
IdeaVis: A Hybrid Workspace and Interactive Visualization for Paper-based Collaborative Sketching Sessions.
and a short paper on:
Harnessing the Benefits of Bimanual and Multi-finger Input for Supporting Grouping Tasks on Interactive Tabletops

Further, we are looking forward to our workshop on Proxemics in Human-Computer Interaction!

Prof. Harald Reiterer will give an invited Talk about “Positionierung der Bibliothek im digitalen Zeitalter (Positioning of the Library in the digital age)” on Thursday 13 Sept 2012 at BIS Conference in Konstanz. The BIS Conference is the meeting of the Swiss Libraries. 

Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer will give a keynote talk on September 13th, 2012 at the Kongress Bibliothek Information Schweiz (BIS) in Konstanz. The event is going to be at the Konzilgebäude in Konstanz and the keynote Positionierung der Bibliothek im digitalen Zeitalter? will start at 09:00 a.m. at the Oberer Saal (capacity 400 people).

We would be pleased to welcome you at this event.

Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer will give a talk entitled Blended Library on November 15th, 2012 at the World Usability Day 2012 (WUD) in Hannover. The talk will be at 5 pm. It covers our vision of the Blended Library and will unfold current findings of the research project.

We encourage you to visit the WUD in Hannover and, especially, attend the Blended Library talk.

We will present the current semester’s topics for bachelor/master-projects on Wednesday, October 24th from 12:00 – 13:00, in our MediaRoom (C203).

Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer will give a talk entitled “Interaktion mit großen und verteilten Displays” on November 13th, 2012 at the congress „Mensch und Technik – Auf dem Weg zum Internet“ in the Studio Villa Bosch in Heidelberg. The talk will start at 10:45 am. We would be pleased to welcome you at this event.

A full paper from project “Holistic Workspace” were accepted for presentation at this year’s Useware 2012 conference. The conference on Human-Computer Interaction will take place in Kaiserslautern from December 4th to December 5th. We will present paper on “Neue Interaktionsformen für die Leitwarte der Zukunft”.

We are looking forward to an interesting conference!

Prof. Aaron Quigley from the University of St Andrews will visit the University of Konstanz and will give a talk entiteled “Ubiquitous User Interfaces: Eyes, Gaze and Displays”. The talk will take place on December 19th, 2012 at 15:15 h in Room G 309. We would be pleased to welcome you at this event.