Ideas-Brainstorm Summer 2010

Brainstorm your ideas for the Summer 2010 issue on Interfaces here.

(This will be the launch issue of the redesigned magazine, so hit this one out of the ball park!)

FEATURES

  • Interactive surfaces and tangibles – e.g., multitouch tables, Microsoft Surface.  Has gone mainstream (iPhone, CNN magic wall).
    • Jeff Han, Perceptive Pixel.
    • Benko, MSR
    • Ullmer, LSU?
    • Sergi Jordà (reactables) **ACCEPTED** Edited – Ryan
    • Someone from SMART technologies.
    • Chia Shen, Harvard
  • Gestures and natural user interfaces (NUI’s) – via accelerometers, vision-tracking, depth cameras, … Wii remote is a good example of this technology deployed.  Interface in Minority Report is closer than we think. Interaction without interfaces? No input devices; or at least not that users can see.  Gestures, posture, location – e.g., supported via depth cameras.
    • Dan Saffer, Kicker Studio.
    • Johnny Lee, MS applied sciences **ACCEPTED**
  • Out with the mouse, in with the pen. – Fingers are replacing mice for buttons/menus/scrolling/zooming.  But fingers are poor for writing/drawing. Does this secure a place for pens in future interfaces?
    • Ken Hinkley, Microsoft Research.
    • Someone from Wacom?
    • Gordon Kurtenbach (Autodesk) **ACCEPTED**
    • Raven Balakrishnan at Toronto. Student from DGP Toronto HCI group? **NO TIME**
  • **FOLDED INTO PEN INTERACTION** Paper: Can you teach an old technology new tricks? – Old technology, amazing capabilities. It’s not going away for a long time. Several research groups are looking at neat ways to extend the functionality of plain old paper by infusing it with computational and communication abilities.
  • Brain-Computer Interfaces
  • physiological computing – body, muscle EMG, posture, GSR, skinput, tongue input? (non-brain stuff)
    • Desney Tan (MSR), Dan Morris (MSR), Scott Saponas (UW), Chris Harrison (CMU) **ACCEPTED**
  • Speech – Talking to computers.  Promised for a long time, hasn’t really materialized. Why? What is future? • Speech Recognition • Speaker Recognition • Auditory Emotion Analysis • Human-Made Noise/Sign Detections (Gasp, Sigh, Laugh, Cry, etc.)
    • Alex Rudnicky (CMU) **ACCEPTED – something smaller**
  • Small device interaction.  Nano touch, scratch input, lucid touch.
    • Patrick Baudisch (HPI) **ACCEPTED**

DEPARTMENTS & COLUMNS

  • Introduction / topic overview. e.g., Mice have been sitting on desks for the past 45 years, keyboards almost 200!  In the mean time, we’ve invented automobiles, gone into space, and created the Internet.  However, the future of these devices is in limbo for the first time.  We are on the eve of several new technology trends.  Finger input is all the rage (multitouch surfaces, iPhone, touch screens in cars).  Microsoft’s project Natal will soon have us playing video games with no controllers at all. Etc. etc.  So how do the experts see us interacting with future computing systems?  Are the mouse and keyboard’s days numbered?  Or will they live in concert with a variety of new interaction styles?
  • “Hello World” — possible “Build your own multi-touch table” tutorial – Tom Bartindale
  • “Back” — a few options here for old interface technology to be highlighted: one option is going way back into the past and looking at interaction via keyboard and dumb terminal (i.e. the 60′s); another is highlighting the first GUI work at Xerox Parc (Xerox Star Workstation); or the first “commercial” GUI computer, The Macintosh. Take your pick.
  • All the other XRDS departments!!
  • Possible: Column by Graham McAllister (Vertical Slice) on users’ experiences with Wii and Natal, possibly highlighting research going on at Sussex too.
  • Have a look at the people in MIT Media Lab for possible interviews — Malay
  • FACTOIDS – Ryan
    • What was the first mass-produced computer to have a GUI and a Mouse? Apple Lisa
    • Inventor of the mouse? Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Laboratory in 1965
    • What computer accessory did Apple try splitting in two in 1993, in an attempt to reduce injuries? The Keyboard
    • What pressure-sensitive handheld organizer was developed under the code name “Touchdown”? The Palm Pilot.
    • The first graphical video game was probably SpaceWar by Slug Russel of MIT in 1962 for the PDP-1 including the first computer joysticks.
    • Before Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel, the initial spreadsheet was VisiCalc developed in 1977-8 by 2 students from MIT and the Harvard Business School.
    • The mouse was initially developed at Stanford Research Laboratory (now SRI) in 1965 to be a cheap replacement for light-pens.
    • Who was the inventor of “Control-Alternate-Delete”? David Bradley of IBM in 1980
    • What was the original purpose of “Control-Alternate-Delete”? To reset early PCs without turning them off. Microsoft adopted it to help ensure people powered down correctly, then to handle “administrative functions” such as the vital “end task” feature for computer software that crashes or otherwise gets stuck.
    • AZERTY, QWERTZ and QWERTU – French-Speaking, Central and Eastern European alternatives to the QWERTY keyboard layout.
    • WYSIMOLWYG – What You See Is More Or Less What You Get

COVER ART

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