. The proliferation ofcomputing into the physical world promises more than the ubiquitous availability of computing infrastructure; it suggests new paradigms of interaction inspired by constant access to information and computational capabilities. For the past decade, applicationdriven research in ubicomp has pushed three interaction themes: natural interfaces, context-aware applications, and automated capture and access. To chart a course for future research in ubiquitous computing, we review the accomplishments of these efforts and point to remaining research challenges. Research in ubiquitous computing implicitly requires addressing some notion of scale; whether in the number and type of devices, the physical space of distributed computing or the number of people using a system. We posit a new area of applications research, everyday computing, focussed on scaling interaction with respect to time. Just as pushing the availability of computing away from the traditional desktop fun...

Through a study of web site design practice, we observed that web site designers design sites at different levels of refinement--site map, storyboard, and individual page--and that designers sketch at all levels during the early stages of design. However, existing web design tools do not support these tasks very well. Informed by these observations, we created DENIM, a system that helps web site designers in the early stages of design. DENIM supports sketching input, allows design at different refinement levels, and unifies the levels through zooming. We performed an informal evaluation with seven professional designers and found that they reacted positively to the concept and were interested in using such a system in their work.

We present the ConnecTable, a new mobile, networked and context-aware information appliance that provides affordances for pen-based individual and cooperative work as well as for the seamless transition between the two. In order to dynamically enlarge an interaction area for the purpose of shared use, a flexible coupling of displays has been realized that overcomes the restrictions of display sizes and borders. Two ConnecTable displays dynamically form a homogeneous display area when moved close to each other. The appropriate triggering signal comes from built-in sensors allowing users to temporally combine their individual displays to a larger shared one by a simple physical movement in space. Connected ConnecTables allow their users to work in parallel on an ad-hoc created shared workspace as well as exchanging information by simply shuffling objects from one display to the other. We discuss the user interface and related issues as well as the software architecture. We also present the physical realization of the ConnecTables.

This paper introduces a new type of interface for 3D drawings that improves the usability of gestural interfaces and augments typical command-based modeling systems. In our suggestive interface, the user gives hints about a desired operation to the system by highlighting related geometric components in the scene. The system then infers possible operations based on the hints and presents the results of these operations as small thumbnails. The user completes the editing operation simply by clicking on the desired thumbnail. The hinting mechanism lets the user specify geometric relations among graphical components in the scene, and the multiple thumbnail suggestions make it possible to define many operations with relatively few distinct hint patterns. The suggestive interface system is implemented as a set of suggestion engines working in parallel, and is easily extended by adding customized engines. Our prototype 3D drawing system, Chateau, shows that a suggestive interface can effectively support construction of various 3D drawings.

We present a quantitative analysis of delimiters for pen gestures. A delimiter is “something different ” in the input stream that a computer can use to determine the structure of input phrases. We study four techniques for delimiting a selection-action gesture phrase consisting of lasso selection plus marking-menu-based command activation. Pigtail is a new technique that uses a small loop to delimit lasso selection from marking (Fig. 1). Handle adds a box to the end of the lasso, from which the user makes a second stroke for marking. Timeout uses dwelling with the pen to delimit the lasso from the mark. Button uses a button press to signal when to delimit the gesture. We describe the role of delimiters in our Scriboli pen interaction testbed, and show how Pigtail supports scope selection, command activation, and direct manipulation all in a single fluid pen gesture.

Our goal is to provide tools to support working meetings on an electronic whiteboard, called Tivoli. This paper de- scribes how we have integrated structured "domain objects" into the whiteboard environment. Domain objects represent the subject matter of meetings and can be exchanged between Tivoli and group databases. Domain objects can be tailored to produce meeting tools that are finely tuned to meeting practices. We describe the facility for tailoring and managing domain objects and the user interface techniques for blending these into the whiteboard environment. We show examples of both specific and generic meeting tools crafted from domain objects, and we describe a long-term case study in which these tools support an ongoing work process.

Automated support for the capture and access of live experiences is a common theme for ubiquitous computing. For certain capture situations, such as informal or opportunistic gatherings, existing capture frameworks are inadequate for a number of reasons. They require too much time to initiate a capture session and they often are too inflexible to support unstructured and impromptu use. In this paper, we present a whiteboard capture application called DUMMBO, aimed to support opportunistic and serendipitous meeting capture. We emphasize a easy-toinitiate interface that mirrors as much as possible traditional whiteboard functionality. This is accompanied by visualization techniques for accessing captured meetings afterwards. By separating the physical interface for capture from the electronic interface for accessing captured meetings, we demonstrate how a capture and access application can be designed to better support its intended audience. Keywords Ubiquitous computing, automated cap...

research.microsoft.com

In this paper, we describe a technique for dynamically grouping digital ink and audio to support user interaction in freeform note-taking systems. For ink, groups of strokes might correspond to words, lines, or paragraphs of handwritten text. For audio, groups might be a complete spoken phrase or a speaker turn in a conversation. Ink and audio grouping is important for editing operations such as deleting or moving chunks of ink and audio notes. The grouping technique is based on hierarchical agglomerative clustering. This clustering algorithm yields groups of ink or audio in a range of sizes, depending on the level in the hierarchy, and thus provides structure for simple interactive selection and rapid non-linear expansion of a selection. Ink and audio grouping is also important for marking portions of notes for subsequent browsing and retrieval. Integration of the ink and audio clusters provides a flexible way to browse the notes by selecting the ink cluster and playing the correspond...

In this paper, a conceptual model for synchronous applications in ubiquitous computing environments is proposed. To test its applicability, it was used to structure the architecture of the BEACH software framework that is the basis for the software infrastructure of i-LAND (the ubiquitous computing environment at FhG-IPSI). The BEACH framework provides the functionality for synchronous cooperation and interaction with roomware components, i.e. room elements with integrated information technology. To show how the BEACH model and framework can be applied, the design of a sample application is explained. Also, the BEACH model is positioned against related work. In conclusion, we provide our experiences with the current implementation.