EPresence, a major software deliverable, has recently had its server upgraded to Version 4.0. To see how it all works, go to: http://nectar.epresence.kmdi.utoronto.ca/ .
You may want to navigate to the archived events, and peruse some of the talks there. For example, Graduate students will find interesting talks on topics such as Dealing with Writer’s Block’and How to Get Your Stuff Published.
Add comment July 26th, 2007
Eye-Tracking Device Lets Billboards Know When You Look at Them is the headline on the Wired online magazine.
Wired reports on the eyebox2 from xuuk (a startup), based on CEO and Nectar researcher Roel Vertegaal at Queens University. It describes an eye-tracking device that offers an automated method to find hot spots of eye activity in the real world, and how it could be applied to digital advertising and to create more ‘polite’ devices.
For more information: Read the article
Add comment June 13th, 2007
DocuBurst, the brainchild of University of Toronto and University of Calgary Nectar PhD. student Chris Collins, was recently featured in the front page of the Ideas section of the Toronto Star. As outlined in the article, the name DocuBurst is a mash-up of document and sunburst and describes it as a new method of information visualization (a.k.a. InfoViz) that allows a person to quickly determine the cumulative theme(s) of a given book or document, while at the same time allowing specific keyword searches.
A year away from completing his PhD. Chris created DocuBurst as a final course project and continues to build on his work. In the meantime, DocuBurst’s keyword search feature will be road-tested at the University of England this fall, when Chris will be asked to help analyze Victorian literature to determine how often authors used rare words, and in what context. Collins also just entered the Future of the Book contest in which he converted MacKenzie Wark’s open source book Gamer Theory into DocuBurst format.
More information and the full Toronto Star article are available at:
Add comment June 11th, 2007
Meghan Allen; Supervisor: Joanna McGrenere
PhotoTalk is a software application for a mobile device that allows people with aphasia to capture and manage digital photographs in order to support face-to-face communication. Aphasia is an acquired language impairment which can affect speaking, auditory comprehension, reading and writing. Individuals with aphasia often find it challenging to communicate verbally, although they generally retain their ability to recognize images. Unlike any other augmentative and alternative communication device, our application focuses solely on image capture and organization and is designed to be accessible to people with aphasia.
The PhotoTalk project used a streamlined research process that consisted of 4 phases: (1) a participatory design phase involving
speech experts, (2) an informal usability study, (3) the primary evaluation of PhotoTalk, a 1 month field study with 2 people who have aphasia, and (4) a secondary field study with 1 individual who has aphasia.
Two speech-language pathologists acted as representative users in the participatory design phase in order to rapidly design and develop PhotoTalk and to move quickly to the evaluation stage with individuals who have aphasia. The informal usability study with 5 participants caught usability problems and provided preliminary feedback on the usefulness of PhotoTalk before we moved forward with the field studies.
Our 1 month field evaluations with 3 users demonstrated the application’s promise in terms of both its usability and usefulness in
real life situations. Both participants in the primary field study used PhotoTalk regularly and fairly independently throughout the field study, although not always for its intended communicative purpose. The participant in the secondary study was able to use PhotoTalk completely independently for specific communicative purposes.
In this thesis we describe the streamlined research process we used, the PhotoTalk application, the informal usability study, and the two field studies, as well as provide preliminary guidelines for involving domain experts in assistive technology research.
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Add comment October 21st, 2006
Grego McEwan, University of Calgary
This thesis is the culmination of several years work on the Community Bar, a system supporting casual interaction within the Commons.
Abstract.
The Community Bar (CB) is groupware supporting informal awareness and casual interaction for small social groups of people with a common purpose. CB’s design supports how communities of ad-hoc and long-standing groups are built and sustained: by maintaining awareness of one another and being able to casually transition into interaction. I begin this thesis by deriving design guidelines for awareness and interaction, primarily based on a comprehensive sociological theory. I then describe how CB was implemented according to the guidelines. I also describe the architectural design that supports awareness and interaction within a distributed group, including an extensible plugin architecture allowing customisation of CB’s functionality. Finally, along with some colleagues, I conducted an in-depth field study of CB. We used results from this study to reflect upon the matches and mis-matches that occurred between the theoretical usage behaviour predicted by the design principles versus the actual usage behaviours observed in the deployed implementation.
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Add comment October 9th, 2006
Mark Altosaar, Roel Vertegaal, Changuk Sohn, Daniel Cheng
One of the problems with notification appliances is that they can be distracting when providing information not of immediate interest to the user. In this paper, we present AuraOrb, an ambient notification appliance that deploys progressive turn taking techniques to minimize notification disruptions (see Figure). AuraOrb uses social awareness cues, such as eye contact to detect user interest in an initially ambient light notification. Once detected, it displays a text message with a notification heading visible from 360 degrees. Touching the orb causes the associated message to be displayed on the user’s computer screen. When user interest is lost, AuraOrb automatically reverts back to its idle state.
We performed an initial evaluation of AuraOrb’s functionality using a set of heuristics tailored to ambient displays. We compared progressive notification with the use of persistent ticker tape notifications and Outlook Express system tray messages for notifying the user of incoming emails. Results of our evaluation suggest that progressive turn taking techniques allowed AuraOrb users to access notification headings with minimal impact on their focus task.
Additonal Information
Add comment September 26th, 2006
Connor Dickie, Jamie Hart, Roel Vertegaal, Alex Eiser
We present LookPoint, a system that uses eye input for switching input between multiple computing devices. LookPoint uses an eye tracker to detect which screen the user is looking at, and then automatically routes mouse and keyboard input to the computer associated with that screen. We evaluated the use of eye input for switching between three computer monitors during a typing task, comparing its performance with that of three other selection techniques: multiple keyboards, function key selection, and mouse selection. Results show that the use of eye input is 111% faster than the mouse, 75% faster than function keys, and 37% faster than the use of multiple keyboards. A user satisfaction questionnaire showed that participants also preferred the use of eye input over other three techniques. The implications of this work are discussed, as well as future calibration-free implementations
Additonal Information
Add comment September 26th, 2006
Mani Golparvar Fard, Sheryl Staub-French, Barry Po, and Melanie Tory
Building design is a complex multi-disciplinary process that requires extensive collaboration to develop a coordinated design that satisfies the functional, aesthetic, and economic requirements of the owner. Recently, 3D design tools are gaining acceptance and providing significant benefits to the design coordination process. However, it remains unclear as to how such tools can be incorporated effectively into fully digital interactive workspaces to support 3D design coordination. This paper describes an initial set of requirements for accomplishing design coordination tasks in a computer-supported interactive workspace. We developed these requirements through: (1) observations of design development meetings in paper-based workspaces, (2) observations of 3D design coordination meetings in current interactive workspaces, and (3) experiments conducted in a state-of-the-art interactive workspace. We describe the work practices of design teams in these different workspaces, the benefits of existing collaboration technologies, and the functionality required to support 3D design coordination.
Milestones
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Add comment June 20th, 2006
Karl Martin, Cindy Guo, Kostas Plataniotis (supervisor)
There are two distinct trends emerging in the field of multimedia communications. One is the need for content scalability to enable Universal Multimedia Access (UMA) for varied devices and network conditions. The other is the demand for end-to-end security (e.g., confidentiality and copyright protection), backed up by strong encryption standards. Unfortunately, these two trends have traditionally been considered to be in conflict with each other.
Content scaling is performed by a transcoding operation which requires direct access to the content, ultimately compromising security.
This project, Secure Scalable Multimedia Streaming (SSMS), aims to address this conflict by developing a framework for streaming scalable multimedia, while providing end-to-end security. Previous work performed by HP Labs addressed only secure scaling of video content; SSMS applies the concept to various media, such as slides and documents, as well as video. The framework relies on the content being hierarchically structured using XML and appropriately described using metadata. By encrypting the content, but keeping the structure and metadata in clear-text, a transcoding server can scale the encrypted content without having to decrypt it. Hence, only the receiver with the correct decryption key can access the actual content. Furthermore, this framework may enable complex security policies by matching an encryption key hierarchy with the semantic hierarchy of the content.
Currently, basic framerate scalability of encrypted MPEG-4 (Part 2) video has been implemented. An online proof-of-concept demo is linked at the bottom of the project page. The next milestones are to implement secure, fully scalable H.264 video (AKA MPEG-4 Part 10, or
AVC) and finally MS PowerPoint slides and XML-based documents.
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Add comment May 2nd, 2006
S.D. Scott, M.S.T. Carpendale, and K.M. Inkpen
Researchers seeking alternatives to traditional desktop computers have begun exploring the potential collaborative benefits of digital tabletop displays. However, there are still many open issues related to the design of collaborative tabletop interfaces, such as whether these systems should automatically orient workspace items or enforce ownership of workspace content. Understanding the natural interaction practices that people use during tabletop collaboration with traditional media (e.g., pen and paper) can help to address these issues. Interfaces that are modeled on these practices will have the additional advantage of supporting the interaction skills people have developed over years of collaborating at traditional tables. To gain a deeper understanding of these interaction practices we conducted two observational studies of traditional tabletop collaboration in both casual and formal settings. Our results reveal that collaborators use three types of tabletop territories to help coordinate their interactions within the shared tabletop workspace: personal, group, and storage territories. Findings from a spatial analysis of collaborators’ tabletop interactions reveal important properties of these tabletop territories. In order to provide a comprehensive picture of the role of tabletop territoriality in collaboration, we conclude with a synthesis of our findings and previous research findings and with several relevant design implications.
The figure shows directional zones (Figure 1) and radial zones (Figure 2).
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Add comment March 8th, 2006
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