CHI 2008: Collaborative Interaction with Volumetric Displays

Collaborative Interaction with Volumetric Displays by Tovi Grossman, Ravin Balakrishnan

Summary:

This paper tries to address the difficulties with collaborative interaction with volumetric displays. They use the Actuality Systems Volumetric Display (see first short video). The way the volumetric display works is there is a virtical projection screen that rotates around the virtical Z axis and a projection engine using relay optics that projects an imagine onto this spinning screen so that a 3D image is then seen by the user (see image below).

Collaborative control is used with handheld devices to manipulate the display and hats with sensors are used to determine different users position around the display.

The paper goes into great detail on some of the many problems with collaborative interaction in general 2D space and then addressses some new problems that arise in 3D space. The prototype they create attempts to solve many of these problems including: location awareness, navigation, 3D cursors, options dialog box, etc.

The paper also talks about their unique algorithm for hidden surface removal. This always for the user, depending on his position around the volumetric display to only see that side of the 3D object, as opposed to seeing outlines through the object of the otherside.

Thoughts:

Seems like very useful research beginning research. They made a point to say that their goal was not to show cool ways of interacting with it which is why the used hand held remote controls and keyboards, but to come up with a way of collaboratively interacting with volumetric displays. So the hardware technology may not be that impressive compared to some other volumetric display research, the fact that the software is designed for collaborative interaction is the main thing to keep in mind.

Videos:

The Man Who Shocked The World by Thomas Blass, PH.D.

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Tyler

Petey

Patrick

Summary:

This is a biography of the life of Stanley Milgram. Blass starts with a very detailed description of Milgrams parents their Jewish heritage and quickly dives into Milgrams education and the struggles he faced. Blass covers not only Milgrams famous Obedience experiments but also describes the conformity experiments he did leading up to the Obedience experiments as well as many other experiments after the Obedience experiments such as the Six Degrees of separation, and his many Urban City experiments. Thomas didn't gloss over some of Milgrams failures either as he talked about Milgrams Cyranoid experiment attempts.

Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this book, mainly because of my side interest in psychology/sociology. I found all of the experiments Milgram did very interesting. Towards the end of his life however, his experiments did seem pretty out there and not very applicable to any kind of serious study. For the most part Blass was pretty objective in describing Stanley's life however, at times I guess he couldn't help himself and was more than willing to give his two cents on Milgrams failures or bad judgement. Overall, it was a good biography on the life and legacy of Stanley Milgram.

The Mole People by Jennifer Toth

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Sarah

Summary:

Jennifer Toth documents several trips down into the tunnels beneath New York City as she immerses herself into the lives of the "Mole People". Her ethnography on the mole people covers mostly qualitative data on the culture as opposed to quantitative. She describes the living conditions of various underground tunnels throughout New York City in addition to describing in great detail the individual people she encountered. Toth addresses the different reasons people are forced underground and discovers that many do not even wish to return to the surface. Women, men, children, runaways, drug addicts, and gangs are all among the many different kinds of people she interviews and comes in contact with during her study.

Thoughts:

This book was very beneficial to the ethnography I later did on the culture of open-mic events. The qualitative data she collected gave me a good example to follow in collecting the qualitative data for my ethnography. As a computer scientist the qualitative approach was very informative since we are mostly exposed to a more quantitative approach when collecting data. Overall I felt the book was a good and easy read. At times I felt it got side-tracked in talking about tunnels of different cities and it felt like Toth glossed over some of the dangerous situations she was thrown into and didn't go into enough detail on the fear she must have felt. Even though it was an ethnography and she should be separated from the culture, I feel describing what she was feeling would paint a better picture of the situation and event to the reader to better understand the culture.

Second Light

Going Beyond the Display: A Surface Technology with an Electronically Switchable Diffuser

by Shahram Izadi, Steve Hodges, Stuart Taylor, Dan Rosenfeld, Nicolas Villar, Alex Butler, and Jonathan Westhues

Summary:

Second Light is an interactable display tabletop that uses switchable diffusers for simultaneous projection on and through the surface without contamination. It uses FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy) multi-touch on the surface and on a secondary surface display above the tabletop for input.

How It Works:

The idea is there are two projectors that project two different images only out of phase with each other and the tabletop diffuser will turn opaque and clear at the same frequency of the projectors so that one projector will show up on the tabletop when the diffuser is opaque and the other projector will show up on a second cheap hand-held page above the tabletop display. Hand-held displays can have an FTIR battery operated device attached to it so that input can also be made on the separate display held above the tabletop.

My Thoughts:

I had already stumbled apon this prior to reading this article when I was "youtubeing" Microsoft Surface via the videos posted below. The technology has a lot of potential assuming developers utilize all its capabilities. My concerns right now are the expense (which is something ridiculous like $12k or something) and the fact that Microsoft has their hands on it, which typically means developers will be forced to try to develop apps for it with their hands tied behind their backs.

Eye-Candy Videos:

Open-Mic Ethnography

Summary:

I decided to do an ethnography on the culture of people who attend open-mic's as well as provide some insight for someone wanting to do an open-mic for the first time. I decided to go to Revolution Cafe & Bar's open-mic, which is held every Wednesday starting around 9:30pm. I brought my Flip Video Recorder to try and document some of the people performing to get an understanding of what kind of performances were done at this open-mic. While I was there I talked to as many people as I could and basically interviewed them without their knowledge trying to get as much information about them as I could without seeming creepy.

Conclusions:

I came in with the hypothesis that there would be a common culture among the people there and that given Revolutions reputation as a music venue there would be a lot of music snobs. I was pretty much wrong on both accounts. The only common culture among the people there is their love for music. Other than that it is a place full of the most diverse group of people you can find in College Station. There are punk rockers, emo's, rave enthusiasts, country music fans, and pretty much anyone from any group you can think of that has a love for music. And as far as the music snobs go, people were very nice to me when I performed. After I played people would come up to me to say something encouraging about my performance. This out of their way behavior more than likely was a result that I told them before I played that it was my first open-mic, but it does show how receptive they are for new comers.

Videos:

The Media Equation by Byron Reeves & Clifford Nass

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Brian Salato

Patrick

Tyler

Reeves and Nass attempt to prove the idea that media = real life (The Media Equation) in this book. They set up a bunch of experiments that go about showing how people treat various forms of media (computers, TV's, etc.) like the real life things they are attempting to emulate. They address many human behaviors such as manners, personality, emotion, social roles, and form. They provide very compelling studies on human behavior with media, many of which the results are counter-intuitive.

The underlining question that this book is trying to answer is a philosophical one, "If you treat something like real life does that make it real life?". Reeves and Nass say yes and they go about demonstrating how people treat media like real life. However, this proves nothing. It just shows how people treat media like real life. The authors do do some pretty thought provoking experiments with human behavior and media and it does give some very good insight into computer-human interaction, but it is not evidence to a philosophical question. Now I'm sure someone could put together some very compelling arguments for media = real life and it would be fun to discuss, but that's not what the book discussed. Which is good because then it wouldn't be a very good source for computer-human interaction. I just found it very difficult to read because I couldn't bring myself to stop disagreeing with the conclusions they were going for. Overall it's a good book to read for computer-human interaction and I would recommend it to someone but would be very torn with whether or not to warn them about the conclusions the book tries to make.

Everyday Designs

My shower faucet is an excellent example of how all faucets should be designed. I've never come across this until I moved in to my current apartment. Most faucets require you to mix warm and cold water yourself to find the preferred temperature, which is very annoying to have to figure out every time you want luke-warm water. With this faucet I can leave the temperature at the same place each time I use it. The only time I ever have to adjust the temperature knob is if I take a shower right after my roommate and that's because there is less hot-water. 

This next video is a perfect example of the quality designs 

that Apple has been producing for the mass consumer ever since Steve Jobs came back to the company, courtesy of The Onion.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard