| The Augmented Office Environments project seeks to explore and evaluate the addition of visual peripheral displays to human-computer interfaces. Often discussed in the context of ubiquitous computing and augmented environments, these displays are envisioned as a natural extension to traditional computing in a work setting. In particular, we are interested in leveraging projected displays as peripheral interfaces that complement existing focal work areas, and supporting the natural flow of work across these two settings.
Our group is currently involved in two major research efforts. First, we are working to design and build an interface for individual office workers that uses projected visual displays to extend their virtual workspace past the confines of their desktop monitors. This system, Kimura, uses the peripheral displays to assist users in managing multiple "working contexts" -- coherent sets of tasks typically involving the use of multiple documents, tools, and communications with others. Background activities (working contexts) are visualized on the peripheral displays as a montage of images garnered from desktop computer activity logs, and help remind the user of past actions. Additionally, montages serve as anchors for background awareness information that can be gleaned from a context-aware infrastructure. Supporting interaction with the montages, and their integration with background contextual cues represents a key contribution of our research.
We are doing this research in collaboration with Elizabeth D. Mynatt and her Everyday Computing Lab and with Gregory M. Corso, a professor in the School of Psychology.
This project is funded by the NSF under grant 9988712, as well as an Academic Equipment Grant from Sun Microsystems and a generous contribution from Ricoh Innovations.
Associated Papers Liogkas, N., MacIntyre, B., Mynatt E.D., Smaragdakis, Y., Tilevich, E. & Voida, S. (2004, July-September). Automatic partitioning for prototyping ubiquitous computing applications. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 3(3), 40-47. [details] Voida, Stephen; Mynatt, Elizabeth D. and MacIntyre, Blair. "Supporting Collaboration in a Context-Aware Office Computing Environment." A position paper for the workshop on Collaboration with Interactive Walls and tables at the 4th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2002). Gothenburg, Sweden. [details] Voida, Stephen; Mynatt, Elizabeth D.; MacIntyre, Blair and Corso, Gregory M. "Integrating Virtual and Physical Context to Support Knowledge Workers." In IEEE Pervasive Computing, 1(3):73-79, July-September 2002. [details] MacIntyre, Blair; Mynatt, Elizabeth D.; Voida, Stephen; Hansen, Klaus Marius; Tullio, Joe and Corso, Gregory M., "Support For Multitasking and Background Awareness Using Interactive Peripheral Displays." In Proceedings of ACM UIST '01 Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Orlando, Florida, USA, November 11-14), ACM Press, 41-50. [details] Hansen, Klaus Marius; MacIntyre, Blair; Mynatt, Elizabeth D.; Tullio, Joe and Voida, Steve. "Hypermedia in the Kimura System: Using Spatial, Temporal, and Navigational Relationships to Support Multitasking and Background Awareness." Presented at ACM Hypertext 2001, Aarhus, Denmark. August 14-18, 2001. [details] |
