Birgnull et al.: Enticing People…
This report on user studies with large public displays had a number of interesting points. The ways that people react to these displays in social experiences reflects upon much of the future of ubicom. People were worried about “looking stupid” when they were trying to use with the display, and this is something we will have to deal with when we create our public interfaces. This case is different from most of the ones we have discussed, because its purpose is to communicate to a large number of people, many of which you don’t know. In the cases of Vogel, D et al. and some of our other readings, the interactions with the displays are meant for personal use, and any effect is has on group viewing in minimized. With the uses like Ju, W et al., the information is being shared to a number of people who probably have more connection to the user of the display. While I still feel this paper applies a bit to these models, its effects are not as pronounced.
Hawkey et al.: The Proximity Factor…
Honestly, I found this paper to be a bit underwhelming. It is a good user study into the different ways of using large displays, but most of what it found was nothing that was surprising. The one thing that was interesting to me is some of the comments people gave about being separated from one another. While I expected it to be a problem, it seems that it is a larger one than would be expected. I also had an issue with the use of a touchpad over a mouse. While I understand their choice from the idea of pen input, I feel that by using a mouse the user would have had an easier time interacting from far away due to being better able to judge their cursor location.
Shoemaker et al.: Shadow Reaching…
With shadow reaching, I’m interested in seeing how the user would react when modifying their shadow using virtual light. Since you are already generating the shadow, there are modifications that can be done to possibly make use of the system easier. The most obvious example is to extend the user’s arms so that they can reach all portions of the screen. While this could be beneficial, does the ease of use drop dramatically when you take realism away from the shadow? There are also other possibilities, such as allowing multiple users to control the same shadow or having the shadow change shape dynamically depending on the context.
