Synchronous Gestures in Multi-Display Environments
I really like the idea of having the parties to identify themselves during the connection establishing period. It is like asking the connecting devices to raise their hands. Easy to understand and use. The commercial success of this product on the mobile phones means that it is one of the feasible solution for quickly establishing connections. The BlueTable is using the implicit user action of putting the phones on the table and automates the connection process using the same metaphor. I think this example borders how we may apply the same metaphor in our project.
Sensing and Visualizing Spatial Relations of Mobile Devices
Using spatial relations to visualize devices matches how people perceive them in the physical world. The system uses a 2D image to represent a 3D space. The paper didn’t say how it works in the situation that two devices are on top of each other, but I know if would be a little confusing to display them side by side.
Another question related to this project is what is the optimal number of devices it would support. In a big conference, there might be hundreds of devices in a very small area. Identifying them using the spatial relation would be challenging. Therefore, what is the threshold number and under what properties make the system work best. If a lot of the devices having similar distances between each other, then it becomes difficult to identify a particular device using spatial relations alone. It would be helpful to have some additional information such as the device brand.
Making Sense of the Sensing System
The authors listed five issues that need to be addressed in designing a new interface. I think it is a very good guideline for designing a product not only the ones that require user involvement, but also the ones communicate with other devices. The synchronous gesture system we see in our readings did a good job addressing those five issues in devices communication. At some level, it seems the ubiquitous computing is trying to avoid having to deal with these problems by making the interface into the environment so that the user involvement is kept minimal or event not noticed. Thus, the limited information could lead to the challenges in interpretation in Action area as discussed in the paper. It seems that we need to have a balance between the user involvement and the clarity of user’s intention.
