2013

Dr. Uta Hinrichs and Dr. Miguel Nacenta from the University of St Andrews will visit the University of Konstanz and will give two talks on January 24th, 2013 at 10:00 h in Room F 425.

Dr. Uta Hinrichs will talk about “Open-Ended Information Exploration in Exhibition Spaces: A Case for Visualization & Large Display Technology”. 

The talk of Dr. Miguel Nacenta is entiteled “Perceptual-spatial Factors in the Design of Collaborative Interactive Displays”. 

We would be pleased to welcome you at this event.

We are happy that 5 contributions from our group were accepted for presentation at this year’s CHI 2013 conference.

We will present two Works-In-Progress:

• Blended Shelf: Reality-based Presentation and Exploration of Library Collections 
  Kleiner, Eike; Rädle, Roman; Reiterer, Harald 
  
• Encouraging Collaboration in Hybrid Therapy Games for Autistic Children 
  Marwecki, Sebastian; Rädle, Roman; Reiterer, Harald

one contribution to the Doctoral Consortium:

• Design and Evaluation of Proxemics-Aware Environments to Support Navigation in Large Information Spaces 
  Rädle, Roman

and two workshop contributions :

• Blended Interaction as an Approach for Holistic Control Room Design 
  Butscher, Simon; Mueller, Jens; Schwarz, Tobias; Reiterer, Harald
• Self-Organizing User Interfaces: Envisioning the Future of Ubicomp UIs 
  Jetter, Hans-Christian; Reiterer, Harald

We are looking forward to an exciting conference in Paris!

Prof. Dr. Johannes Schöning from Hasselt University will visit the University of Konstanz and will give a talk about “User Identification Techniques for Interactive Surfaces“ on Thu, Mar 7th, in room D432 from 09:00 to 10:00.

We would be pleased to welcome you at this event.

 Abstract:

Large touch tables have great potential for co-located collaboration because of their ability to track multiple inputs simultaneously. However, the multi-user experience on these devices can be enriched significantly if touch points can be associated with the user performing an action. When the user’s identity is readily available, there are many new opportunities for systems deployed in multi-user scenarios. For example, multiple users can operate applications in different modes at the same time or the appearance of the interface can change to provide automatic translations or help cues for novice users. In my talk I will give an overview on different techniques and I will present a non-intrusive, high-accuracy technique for mapping touches to their corresponding user in a collaborative environment named Carpus.

By mounting a high-resolution camera above the interactive surface, we are able to extract unique features from the back of the user’s hands, from all hand postures that are common during the practical use of multi-touch systems. Carpus supports walk-up-and-use scenarios in which every touch can be identified transparently. Our system therefore enables an entire new range of applications in which the user’s identity is needed. For example, we envision interactive setups in shops in order for customers to get more information about products. Carpus could be used in this scenario to track the users’ interests over different sessions and suggest them other relevant products in which he might be interested in.

Bio:

Johannes Schöning is a professor of computer science with a focus on HCI at Hasselt University, working within the Expertise centre for Digital Media (EDM) – the ICT research institute of Hasselt University. In addition he is a visiting lecturer at UCL London within the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Cities. These web pages are intended to give you an overview on his academic activities.

Before that Johannes worked in industry and at the Innovative Retail Laboratory of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken. During his time at DFKI he received a PhD in computer science at Saarland University (2010) and a Master in Geoinformatics at the University of Münster at the Institute for Geoinformatics (2007). For his PhD he was awarded with the Vodafone Research Advancement Award.

Johannes Schönings research interests are new methods and novel interfaces to mainly navigate through spatial information. In general he develops, design and tests user interfaces that help people to solve daily tasks more effectively. This includes the development of mobile augmented reality applications, interactive surfaces and tabletops and other “Post-Desktop” interfaces.

Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer will give a talk on March 08th, 2013 at the event entitled „Vom Nutzen für den Nutzer. Informationsarchitektur“ in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. The event is hosted by “aed – Verein zur Förderung von Architektur, Engineering und Design in Stuttgart e.V.” and will start at 07:00 pm. We would be pleased to welcome you at this event.

Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer will give a talk about “A new Interaction Paradigm for Distributed User Interfaces” at the University of St. Andrews Computer Human Interaction research group (SACHI) http://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk on Monday 11th March 2013.

Today we came back from the “5. Kongress Bibliothek & Information Deutschland” in Leipzig, Germany. With our talk about the “Blended Shelf: Reality-based presentation and exploration of library collections” we gathered valuable feedback from the library community. The event was a good opportunity to get in touch with colleagues and listen to interesting and inspiring talks all across various topics from librarianship.

Thanks to all listeners of the talk for the nice feedback on twitter.

Don’t hesitate to contact us, if you have any questions or more feedback.

Video

Today, Hans-Christian Jetter successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on “Design and Implementation of Post-WIMP Interactive Spaces with the ZOIL Paradigm”. Congratulations!

The referees:

• Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer (University of Konstanz)
• Prof. Dr. Andreas Butz (LMU Munich)
• Prof. Dr. Daniel A. Keim (University of Konstanz)

In April, Christian will leave for London and start doing his post-doc at the University College London (UCL). 

Christian, we wish you all the best and hope you will miss us and return to Konstanz very soon.

Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer will give a talk on June 22nd, 2013 entitled „Blended Library – Neue Interaktionsformen für die Bibliothek der Zukunft“ in the Bibliothèque cantonale de Lugano. The event is hosted by the “Groupe romand et tessinois des centres de documentation pédagogique (GROCEDOP)” and the “Medien- und Informationszentren der Pädagogischen Hochschulen Deutsche Schweiz (MIPHD)”. It will start at 10:15 am.

 We would be pleased to welcome you at this event.

We are pleased to welcome Thomas Pederson from the IT University of Copenhagen as invited speaker on July, 2nd 2013. He will give a talk about “body-centric modeling of mixed-reality environments”. The talk will be held at 12.00 pm in room Y311.

Abstract:

Embedded and body-worn interactive technology increasingly permeate environments that were previously “digitally dead”. It is becoming harder both for system designers and end-users to draw a line between what is physical (real) and what is virtual (computational/digital). I will present a modeling approach for this emerging “egocentric interaction paradigm” where surrounding infrastructure in a classical Ubiquitous Computing manner is envisioned to adapt itself to the current needs of human agents. The unique features of the proposed approach is the move away from classical Human-Computer Interaction terms such as “input” and “output” to more human-centric “action” and “perception”, opening for a less device-focused perspective on context-aware computing by putting emphasis on human perception, action, and cognitive capabilities. I will exemplify how we have used the model for areas as diverse as activity recognition, multimodal interaction, and (still in the works) illusional user interfaces.

Bio:

Thomas Pederson is associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, researching mobile mixed-reality interaction, tangible user interfaces, and ubiquitous/pervasive computing. Pederson received his PhD in Computing Science from Umeå University, Sweden, in 2003. After various shorter and longer stays at research institutions such as INRIA/IRISA in France and Bari University in Italy, he joined the IT University of Copenhagen in 2009 where is member of the Pervasive Interaction Technology Lab as well as the Interaction Design research group. Pederson regularly serve on conference committees in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing and was program co-chair for Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction in 2010 at MIT Media Lab (TEI’10) and most recently general co-chair for the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI 2012) held at IT University of Copenhagen. Personal web page: http://itu.dk/people/tped/

Prof. Dr. Harald Reiterer will give a talk entitled “Die reale Welt als Vorbild – Neue Wege der Interaktion mit digitalen Welten” at the traditional cooperation event of the Canton of Thurgau and the University of Konstanz at the Kantonsschule Frauenfeld on November 20th 2013.

We would be pleased to welcome you at this event.

Our group contributes two papers and co-organizes a workshop at the ITS 2013 conference which will take place in St Andrews, Scotland from October 6th to October 9th, 2013.

We will present two papers:

• The Effect of Egocentric Body Movements on Users: Navigation Performance and Spatial Memory in Zoomable User Interfaces
  Roman Rädle, Hans-Christian Jetter, Simon Butscher and Harald Reiterer
• Body Panning: A Movement-based Navigation Technique for Large Interactive Surfaces
  Daniel Klinkhammer, Jan Tennie, Paula Erdös and Harald Reiterer

Further, we are looking forward to our workshop on Visual Adaptation of Interfaces.

At this workshop, Jens Müller will present another paper:

• ADAPTIKs: Adaptive Information Keyholes for Public Libraries
  Jens Müller, Simon Butscher and Harald Reiterer

The german journal at – Automatisierungstechnik features an article of members of our research group about Blended Interaction in its current issue. at – Automatisierungstechnik publishes articles covering the entire range of automation technology. The journal maintains close ties to research institutes and universities engaged in automation research. It serves the industry as an important guide on matters related to the development of new theoretical methods and their potential areas of application.

The article is written in german and can be found here:

Blended Interaction – Neue Wege zur Vermischung realer und digitaler Interaktionskonzepte im Kontext von Leitwarten
Tobias Schwarz, Simon Butscher, Jens Müller and Harald Reiterer

Abstract:

Blended Interaction is introduced as a novel approach to a holistic design of the work environment of control room operators. It addresses a continuously growing complexity of human-machine interfaces in control rooms. The approach bases on the principles of reality-based interaction styles, which emphasize both, the operators with their innate abilities and the work environment’s situational context. In addition, results of an evaluation with user from a traffic control room will be presented in which a potential paradigm shift to new forms of interaction is examined.

The german journal i-com – Zeitschrift für interaktive und kooperative Medien features multiple articles of current and former members of our research group in its current issue.

The articles are written in german and can be found here:

• Editorial – Themenschwerpunkt Interaktive Oberflächen in Forschung und Praxis
  Daniel Klinkhammer, Harald Reiterer and Raimund Dachselt

   

• Die Wiederentdeckung analoger Interaktionsqualitäten in der digitalen Leitwarte / The return of physical interaction in future control rooms
  Tobias Schwarz, Jens Müller, Simon Butscher and Harald Reiterer
  
  Abstract:
  Blended Interaction is introduced as a novel approach to a holistic design of the work environment of control room operators. The Framework addresses the continuously growing complexity of human-machine-interfaces in control rooms. The approach refers to the principles of the Realitybased Interaction framework and the Conceptual Blending theory, which both stress the operator’s inherent abilities and their working context. The applicability of Blended Interaction is illustrated by means of a case study which is situated within the context of power plants. In this respect, visualization- and interaction concepts for the manipulation of process variables are presented. Furthermore, the results of a user study and a possible paradigm shift in control room interaction design are discussed.

• Die Verwendung von ZUIs auf Interaktiven Oberflächen als Schlüssel zum Erfolg in realen Unternehmensanwendungen / Key to success: Using Zoomable UIs on Interactive Surfaces in Real-World Corporate Scenarios
  Jens Gerken, Werner A. König and Hans-Christian Jetter
  
  Abstract:
  Zoomable User Interfaces (ZUIs) are a well-established idea for the design of human-computer interfaces. While the vision of a “true” ZUI in its stricter sense has not become reality yet, today’s tablets and touch devices feature many facets of zoomable user interfaces. In this article, we will present smartPerform, a zoomable presentation toolkit which has been commercially developed based on academic research on ZUIs at the University of Konstanz. By illustrating best practices from our customers, we will show that ZUIs are a particularly promising in combination with interactive surfaces and distributed display environments.

i-com is devoted to human-computer interaction, media design, usability, engineering and systems evaluation, software ergonomics, cooperative systems, e-learning, mobile and ubiquitous systems, user-adaptive systems, agent development tools and methods for media in different application fields (including e-business, knowledge management, leisure and entertainment, transport, engineering, and medicine), barrier-free systems design, and the social aspects of information and communication technologies. Disciplines addressed by the journal include computer science, psychology, media design, marketing/branding, sociology, business management, and labor and organizational studies. The journal is an interdisciplinary professional forum for all scientists, business practitioners, and interested parties. 

It is devoted to discussing the development, user-appropriate design, and application of new information and communication technologies. The journal seeks to build bridges between research and practice as well as between teaching and business, emphasizing interdisciplinary teamwork and application-oriented solutions. The journal is the official organ of the department of “Human-Computer Interaction” at the German Association for Informatics.

Today, Florian Geyer successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on “Interactive Spaces for Supporting Embodied Collaborative Design Practices”.

Congratulations!

Flo, we wish you all the best and hope to see you soon again!