HCI Forum: Designing Interaction 2005

Presenters & Abstracts

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Mandella Connors: The idea is that stressful employees go into Virtual Reality. Virtual Reality rescues them from their occupational stress. As a result, the employees exit, de-stressed, renewed, and refreshed. Future research is aimed at proving that Virtual Reality using the distraction technique can alleviate occupational stress suffered by employees in the workplace.

Sean Cordes: Library instruction tutorials: Anatomy of an interface There are a number of tools used by libraries to deliver instructional tutorials online. These include HTML, Flash, Authorware, gif animations, Camtasia, PowerPoint and others. The challenge for the tutorial developer is not whether structures for delivering tutorial content can be created; but whether these structures are a scalable and maintainable.

The poster describes through deconstruction the strategies, techniques and technologies used to design and academic research library tutorial interface. A pictorial overview of the versioning process is delivered, as well as a visual and textual overview of some of the tools involved in the development process.

Jake Ingman : Jake will demonstrate his award-winning interface design: Shadow.ing : Jake's design allows students to visualize and interact with their education. The application combines multiple utilities that students routinely use, thus customizing each student's interface.

Ken Kopecky (with Melinda Cerney): MagicSuit is a unique combination of game and research tool. One of only a handful of games to use motion capture as a means of input, it employs two distinct methods of gesture recognition to turn the user's gestures and poses into magical powers, such as the ability to summon a ball of fire, command inanimate objects to move, or control a mysterious cloud of magic dust.

Dongheng Li: The Starburst Eye-Tracking Algorithm Knowing the user's point of gaze has significant potential to enhance current human-computer interfaces, given that eye movements can be used as an indicator of the attentional state of a user. The primary obstacle of integrating eye movements into today's interfaces is the availability of a reliable, low-cost open-source eye-tracking system. Towards making such a system available to interface designers, we have developed a hybrid eye- tracking algorithm that integrates feature-based and model-based approaches and made it available in an open-source package. We refer to this algorithm as ``starburst'' because of the novel way in which pupil features are detected. This starburst algorithm is more accurate than pure feature-based approaches yet is significantly less time consuming than pure model-based approaches. The current implementation is tailored to tracking eye movements in infrared video obtained from an inexpensive head-mounted eye-tracking system. A validation study was conducted and showed that the technique can reliably estimate eye position with an accuracy of approximately one degree of visual angle.

Yuzhu Lu: Recovering 3D Information From 2D P hotos This presentation describes a systematic semi-automated method to recover 3D virtual models directly from 2D photos . In this research, automated feature information extraction and hierarchical feature -matching algorithms were designed for extracting 3D information from different images of the same object . A convenient tool was also developed with which users can manually edit key points, revise automated image matching results, and select triangles to add more surfaces to final reconstructed models. In this research, a texture-mapping algorithm was also designed to automatically map texture information from photos to the reconstructed models.

Brian Mila: Wearable computing is touted by many as the future of human-computer interaction. The old desktop paradigm is replaced by a completely mobile computer with a head-up microdisplay that can be viewed at all times. Access to information is instantaneous and ubiquitous. Don't miss your chance to use a wearable computer and experience the future of computing for yourself.

Mark Monroe: Overcoming Misconceptions about Usability For decades the study of human computer interaction has found little emphasis in traditional technology education. Certainly the advent of the graphical user interface provided a small boost, as some programming classes now mention the standard use of menus and tool bars. But still most information technology professionals consider usability to be of minor importance compared to the traditional focus on the inner workings of the systems they develop and support. The training of a few specialized HCI professionals will not change these facts. My focus is on determining what it will take to change the popular perception of HCI and usability to that of a core function of information technology professionals and departments.

Steven Ourada: HCI and Assistive Technology Many assistive technologies include a computing component. Human Computer Interaction, therefore, has an important role to play in fitting assistive technologies to their contexts and maximizing their potential.

Michelle Rusch: A cognitive model for user behavior in a map-based census listing application Address canvassing is a field operation used in statistical surveys and censuses to refine address lists prior to conducting field data collection. Recent advances in technology have introduced the potential for these activities to be supported by digital maps on handheld computers.

One concern with the decennial census setting is that hundreds of thousands of listers are hired with a broad range of skills. Early tests conducted to explore the feasibility of using handheld computers for address canvassing indicated that a lister's success using an electronic map with a GPS position indicator is related to his or her spatial ability. We are approaching this problem by developing a cognitive model of the address canvassing task.

Cognitive models are used in the study of Human-Computer Interaction

(HCI to predict user behaviors with proposed software functions and interfaces. Using principles outlined by ACT-R, we are developing a model that will simulate lister decision-making and behavior with respect to relevant map-based tasks. This model provides a solution to our goal in software improvement, where it will provide a basis for prototyping interface designs and software functionality to address problems faced by listers with low spatial ability.

Ronald Sidharta: Audience AR - Tainment AR stands for Augmented Reality. In AR, virtual 3D objects coexist with the real world. In order to create that illusion, the user typically wears a HMD and camera to view the world.

Our research focuses on the use of AR technology to transform physical objects into direct user interfaces. Physical objects have affordances and benefits that are superior to today's ubiquitous 2D interfaces such as the mouse and keyboard.

In applying our concept, we designed two audience entertainment applications. The first one is called “Let's Build A Panda”. Using this application, a player can choose various components to build a custom virtual panda. Afterwards, the player will be able to take picture with his/her virtual panda. The second application, called “Put The Tail On The Donkey” is a AR version of the traditional game with the same name. In this game, a blindfolded player has to arrange the professor's face based on audience's instruction .

Jiang Tian: VSARD: Video See-through Augmented Reality Desk In the HMD augmented reality system, the HMD is cumbersome. It is beneficial to make a desk augmented reality display. There is such an optical see-through augmented reality display desk. For their system, there are occlusion and temporal delay of graphics problems. My poster is about our ongoing project VSARD (video see-through augmented reality desk). It can solve the occlusion problem. At the same time, it can match the computer graphics and computer video. The problem for one camera system is that the viewer can only see the content on the display from one viewpoint. For other viewpoints, it isn't right. So we use head tracking and view interpolation to solve this problem for VSARD.

Bryan Walter, Jared Knutzon, and Tom Batkiewicz: A new design for an immersive ground control station is presented that allows operators to monitor and control one or more semi-autonomous unmanned vehicles. This new ground station utilizes a virtual reality visualization of the operational space and the graphical representation of multiple real time information streams to create an immersive environment designed to significantly enhance an operator's situational awareness and effectiveness. The environment simultaneously informs the operator about the position and condition of the vehicles under his or her control while providing an organizing context for the available information relevant to the engagement. This design is applicable to a range of vehicles including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs).

Jingsheng Zhang: 3D Model Database with X3D The presentation introduces a new a 3D model database design, based upon X3D and relational database (RDBMS) technology, which provides capabilities for integrated storage and management of 3D models. 3D models can be obtained from the WWW, imported from 3D scanners, or uploaded from CAD systems. Models in X3D file format are stored into a relational database via parsing and mapping mechanisms. XQuery and XPath are used to retrieve stored 3D models from the RDBMS. A 3D shape matching method is proposed.