[Ubicomp] Talking Points - Ubicomp Interactive Workspaces

Stanford Interactive Workspaces



SYSTEMS ISSUES

  • Everything coordinated thru EventHeap
    One EventHeap per physical space
    Ubicomp version of EventQueue
    Rationale is for decoupling
    Same idea as Context Toolkit, done differently
    Avoids RPC, decouples components in space and time

  • Failure is expected
    Hence decoupling
    Just restart (the reboot design pattern)
    As long as EventHeap, ICrafter, and DataHeap don't crash, you're ok
    Uses heartbeats for services (periodically refreshes, I'm still alive)

  • ICrafter service and UI manager
    Retrieves predefined UI (if it exists), automatically generates UIs otherwise


INTERACTION ISSUES

  • Groupware, focused on large display, any device interaction

  • Three themes: control (ICrafter), coordination (EventHeap), data (DataHeap)
    Interoperability is an intrinsic issue here
    Still have naming coord problem (another intrinsic interoperability issue)

  • Large display
    Pen interaction
    FlowMenu - ideally, speedup as you go (tho only Francois)
    ZoomScape - things automatically shrink at the top, big in main area
    PointRight - super-mouse across devices


QUESTIONS

  • How to get room geometry?
    Layout of room?
    Position of devices?
    Should note that most large devices don't move, so config file ok approach

  • A lot of work, a lot of infrastructure, and a lot of equipment
    Cheaper or smaller versions? Incremental? How much KoolAid buy-in?

  • Are security and privacy that important here?




RoomWare




  • Day to day interactions are in physical spaces
  • Focus is on workspaces, both interaction and physical design (ex. furniture)
  • Goal is to break out of this box of desktop computing

  • DynaWall
    New interaction techniques - Take and Put, Shuffle throw
    Not as sophisticated as Stanford's work (but also not their goal)

  • CommChairs
    Mobile chairs with computers, individuals in each chair

  • InteracTable
    Table with display, multiple people simultaneous
    Rotate window, etc, big influence on MERL's Diamond Touch

  • Passage
    Uses weight to get data quickly
    Often criticized, but gets the dirty job of data xfer done quickly

  • This is the kind of research you can do when you have a TON of money!


QUESTIONS



COMMON THEMES

  • Why isn't this out already?
    Brad Johanson is doing a startup Tidebreak http://www.tidebreak.com/
    Cost-benefit of this? Equipment not cheap, what portions are best bang for buck?

  • Cheaper, portable versions that don't require large buy-in?
    Ex. USB ports
    Also see Meeting Machine

  • General design of central static parts (wall screen, desks, etc) along
    with ad hoc temporary peripherals (laptops, pdas, mice, etc)

  • Common themes between Interactive Workspaces and Roomware?
    Data transfer (now solved thru USB keyfobs, IR, Bluetooth, and Wireless?)
    Control not as emphasized here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Fix a Jammed Toyota Camry Trunk

This problem needs a higher pagerank, so I figured I would post the solution here. If your Toyota Camry trunk won't open, one possible reason is that it is set to valet mode. Valet mode means that you cannot open the trunk using the release lever inside the car. To set valet mode, you put the key into the trunk lock and turn it counterclockwise. You will know that your trunk is in valet mode if the lock is horizontal rather than vertical, and if you cannot open the trunk using the lever near the driver's seat. Of course, a problem is that sometimes the Camry can get stuck in valet mode, such that you can't use your key to get out of it. (You can see how I spent part of my Sunday morning ...) The solution turns out to be WD-40 . Spray some WD-40 on your key and on the lock. Put the key in, and jiggle it around, and happiness ensues. From an interaction design perspective, it sort of makes sense to have a valet mode. After all, the point of having a valet key is to limit the
Read more

Web 2.0 and Research

I've been chatting with many of my friends and colleagues about an issue that's been bugging me for a while, namely whether academic research has any role to play in the emerging Web 2.0 . I've been slowly coming to the conclusion that the answer is not much. I had a similar discussion with other researchers at HotMobile a few weeks ago. When the web first came out, pretty much every systems researcher ignored it because it was so ugly. The web was not very sophisticated in terms of distributed systems, HTTP lacked elegance, HTML conflated many different ideas, and so on. There were also not any really new ideas with the web, as evidenced by the fact that Tim Berners-Lee 's first paper on the Web was (probably rightfully) rejected from an ACM conference on hypertext. I'm sure one thing that really irked researchers about the nascent web was that it completely ignored the large body of work in hypertext and distributed systems that had preceded it. Even in 1997, as
Read more

[Research] Famous Rejected Papers

I've always thought it would be fun to compile a list of famous rejected research papers, ones that later turned out to be highly influential. For example, in My Life as a Quant , the author tells the story of how the famous Black-Scholes paper (which describes how options should be priced) was rejected several times. The work eventually led to a Nobel Prize in economics. (Yes, I know, there technically is no Nobel Prize in economics). Then there's George Akerlof 's work on asymmetric information . I don't recall exactly, but I think the reviewers thought it was too simplistic. It also led to a Nobel Prize in econ. And then there's Tim Berners-Lee 's original paper on the World Wide Web. He describes his experiences in his book Weaving the Web . I think it was submitted to a hypertext conference, but was accepted only as a demo. I'm guessing reviewers didn't see much novelty in the work, which probably was correct from a research perspective.
Read more