Strohbach, Martin and Van Laerhoven, Kristof and Gellersen, Hans and Schmidt, Albrecht (2002) Ubiquitous interaction : using surfaces in everyday environments as pointing devices. In: Universal Access Theoretical Perspectives, Practice, and Experience : 7th ERCIM International Workshop on User Interfaces for All, Paris, France, October 24–25, 2002, Revised Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science . Springer, Berlin, pp. 263-279. ISBN 9783540008552
Abstract
To augment everyday environments as interface to computing may lead to more accessible and inclusive user interfaces, exploiting affordances existing in the physical world for interaction with digital functionality. A major challenge for such interfaces is to preserve accustomed uses while providing unobtrusive access to new services. In this paper we discuss augmentation of common surfaces such as tables as generic pointing device. The basic concept is to sense the load, the load changes and the patterns of change observed on a surface using embedded load sensors. We describe the interaction model used to derive pointing actions from basic sensor observations, and detail the technical augmentation of two ordinary tables that we used for our experiments. The technology effectively emulates a serial mouse, and our implementation and use experience prove that it is unobtrusive, robust, and both intuitively and reliably usable.