Final Idea

Following our discussion during the last workshop I went on a hunt to find an idea for our interactive device. After much research, and my passion of solving puzzles, I came up with the idea of creating an interactive rubik's cube.

The idea is to be able to control your computer using a rubik's cube. This includes simple tasks such as zooming in or scrolling down when reading a paper, unlocking your laptop using certain combinations, controlling a 3D simulation, etc.

I purchased a couple of rubik's cube and held a meeting with the group the next day. Everyone was on board and very excited about the idea. During the meeting I disassembled one of the cubes to explain to the group how we might go about designing the cube.
We then went to the HCI lab and pitched our idea to some of the research assistants and got positive feedback and techniques in which we can refine our device.

The uses of this device vary from accessing media player to scrolling pages on a web browser or even controlling a 3D simulation. The way it differs from keyboard or mouse is that first it's wireless, second it can be personalized to suit user's needs and third its just a fun way of interacting with your computer.

The device moves us away from WIMP interfaces and provides an opportunity to users to personalise the way they interact with their personal computers. The idea can further be extended such that the cube becomes more than just a controller; the cube itself can be a personal device where each of the 27 smaller cubes are screens. Then it can be used to do things like answering your calls, an alarm clock or even checking your emails.

Workshop 2 – Arduino and Further brainstorming

During this session we were given access to several tools to give us an understanding of what we can do with the kit provided to us and also to further develop our ideas.

We started by installing the SDK on the laptop provided to us and then ran through couple of examples which gave us a chance to play around with the LEDs and the temperature sensors.

Prior to the workshop I carried out some independent research regarding our two ideas from the previous workshop. It turned out that our idea of creating a bat mapper was quite ambitious and perhaps unachievable in the 5 weeks period. Me and Vlad spoke to a few research assistants about our concerns and based on their feedback we decided that it is perhaps best to not pursue this idea.

This left us with the subliminal controller, which I personally wasn't a big fond of as I couldn't see many applications of it. Since we couldn't think of any other ideas, we decided as a team that unless I come up with something better before Friday, we'll go with the subliminal controller.

During the workshop we also used Occulus Rift and Leap motion and discussed with the research assistants about how they work. This not only helped us understand its functionality but also inspired us to think about how we can incorporate them in our interactive device.

Workshop 1 - Final two ideas (Group post)

As a group we crystallised our ideas into two main ones. The first idea was inspired from the movie The Dark Knight (Batman), where the main character uses a cluster of mobile phones as an alternative to sonar devices to map and visualise an enclosed environment.

Since the mobile devices in the market today are not sensitive enough to reliably intercept the sound signals, our approach to this is going to be to use sonar devices instead as a proof of concept. This technology would be beneficial in environments where vision is limited or inexistant, such as:

• Looking around a corner or behind a wall.
• Fire rescue and combat, where vision is quite limited (smoke).
• Helping the visually impaired.

The second idea is a subliminal controller. The goal is to provide subliminal feedback to the user and input to the machine. The main output is a “RGB scent printer” which would be able to create a range of smells based on the user's experience within the application and an IllumiRoom-type of visual output which would be synced with the scents. The subliminal input is a bracelet which detects the user’s pulse and changes the in-game experience based on it. This technology could be used in:

• Gaming
• Cinemas
• Combat Simulations

Below is the video of us presenting our ideas to rest of the class.

Workshop 1 – Brainstorming ideas

During this workshop we gathered together as a group for the first time and discussed the ideas for our interactive device. This workshop was structured to give each of us an opportunity to share our ideas between the group as well as an entire group . First we were all asked to think of up to 10 ideas. This gave each of us a chance to think about and express what we want to achieve by the end of this unit. However, it was quite hard to come up with these ideas when put on the spot. Nevertheless I proposed the following three ideas:

• Tangible surface – a surface made up of an array of thin metal rods which move up or down to form a shape such as buildings or terrain.
• Bat mapper – using a cluster of sonar devices to detect the surrounding environment.
• Mobile control plane – though not much of a challenge, the idea was to build up on existing remote control devices and enable them to be controlled over the internet.

We then all shared our ideas with the rest of the group and categorized them by the devices they would be using. This was a quite challenging as the ideas ranged from something as simple as a mobile controllable plane to something as ambitious as teleportation. Having categorized our ideas we then filtered the list down to just the following 10 ideas:

1. Bat mapper
2. Tangible surface
3. Occulus Rift as an extension to Kinect
4. Wristband to monitor heartbeat, temperature and pressure to change video game dynamics
5. Touch-screen jacket
6. Modifying terrain through vibration/electronic impulses
7. Tablet and TV interaction with Kinect - using eye tracking to scroll webpages on TV and gestures to move between pages for books
8. Smell output from games
9. Water clone/water pressure jetpack
10. Hologram which could be moved in the space and resized

We then further narrowed the list down to 2 ideas only. This was quite challenging as we had few good ideas and some of the team members felt strongly about couple of ideas. We overcame this challenge by discussing uses and complexity related to each device. The final 2 ideas, their uses and and diagrams are mentioned in the group post.

Paper review 2 - Reality Based Interaction: A Framework for Post-WIMP Interfaces

In recent years we have seen an increase in the human-computer interaction techniques towards post-WIMP devices due to a greater understanding of human psychology and availability of powerful hardware. These new devices are intuitive as they build on users' pre-existing knowledge of everyday, non-digital world to a much greater extent than before.

This paper proposes the notion of Reality-Based Interaction (RBI) and claims that much of the new post-WIMP interaction research is based on this framework. The framework focuses specifically on the following four themes from the real-world: Naive Physics, Body Awareness and Skills, Environment Awareness and Skills and Social Awareness and Skills. The author thoroughly explains the four themes and their relation to human-computer interaction.

I like the amount of evidence shown by the authors to prove their claim. They not only refer to research where each of the four themes are found but also examples which consist of more than one of these themes. Furthermore, they also refer to a CHI 2006 workshop in which they observed that researchers generally agreed that focus is moving away from WIMP interfaces. After this they carried out an informal field study, in which they noticed the themes of RBI in work of researchers who were completely oblivious to the notion of RBI.

The authors then suggest that the move towards Reality-Based interaction is a positive one. This in my opinion is not their place to say it, I think what they should have done instead is mentioned its advantages and left it for the reader to decide whether the move is really a positive one or not.

Although its obvious, the authors do point out that its not enough to make a RBI device. These interfaces should also include some unrealistic and artificial features which differs the experience from that of real-world. This might often come at cost of trade off of RBI principles. These trade offs are Expressive Power, Efficiency, Versatility, Ergonomics, Accessibility and Practicality.

The authors then give 4 case-studies which along with incorporating each of RBI themes maintain acceptable trade offs.

Today we might think of RBI as being an obvious way forward, but given that the paper was published in 2008 it definitely brought a new notion to the community e.g the authors talk about gaze control which is something we have only seen this year in a consumer product (Galaxy S4). I also like the amount of research done by the authors to prove their claims.



I would have liked to see authors mention a few disadvantages as a result of RBI, e.g. toddlers pinching magazine papers because they are used to iPad (video above). However, overall the paper is quite thorough and establishes the notion of RBI very well, mentioning not only the themes but also the trade offs.

Paper review – The Power of Mobile Notifications to Increase Wellbeing

This paper is a research into how mobile notifications can increase wellbeing logging behaviour. It starts with emphasising self-logging as a solution for wellbeing. A straightforward example in the paper is of obesity; in the US, over one third of the population is obese; a mobile application which is regularly logged into can help raise self-awareness about wellbeing.

Then the author explains how given enough data they can provide users with feedback such as “You gain weight on Sundays”, “You eat more on days when you walk less” or “You are happier on days when its colder”.

While acknowledging that a lot of information for such feedback can be acquired automatically, the author highlights the need of self-logging to obtain data such as food intake, pain levels and mood. Naturally, users lack discipline to self-log and hence the motivation for this paper.

The paper then talks about related work that has been done in this area and proved unsuccessful as it required users to enter thorough details (e.g. amount of calories) about their intake. Users also reported disliking the disruptive nature of SMS as a reminder to log.

By reviewing user feedback about related work done in this field the authors created a very simple mobile app which made use of a FitBit to log step count and sleep as well as a WiThings Wi-Fi scale to log user’s weight. Calendar data and location was automatically captured and user could manually log food intake each day. To give users more flexibility they could choose things such as the time and frequency at which they should be asked to log their food intake; and the notification was non-interrupting as it would not ring or vibrate but instead just put a small icon in the notification tray.

The widget for inputting food intake is over-simplified; it consists of 3 questions, “How much did you eat today?”, “How healthy was the food you ate?” and “Did you prepare most of your food at home, or did you eat out?”. The user provided answers to this by means of a slide bar. Therefore the application is simplified at the cost of accuracy.

Their findings were quite positive and showed a 5 times increase in self-logging with 55-65% users consistently logging throughout the course of the study (one month). The user feedback was quite affirmative and users in general liked the polite reminders.

In conclusion the paper shows that users are more likely to self-log if Mobile Phone notifications are not disruptive and time and frequency of notifications was user configurable.