Handheld Laser Projector

Enrico got for his project a handheld laser projector. The nice thing about this technology is that the projected image is always in focus - it does not matter if you move the projector or if you project on an uneven surface. The AAXA L1 Laser Pico Projector (even though there are plenty of things that can be improved, noise for a start) provides some inspiration what will become possible if these devices will be common in mobile phones. In Lancaster Enrico explored already 2007/2008 some of the usage scenarios and interaction techniques [1] and I am really curious of further ones. There was a workshop at Pervasive 2010 looking at current research on personal projectors [2].

With this piece of technology we can also move on the idea of a device where interactive shell and functional core of a product is separated. We have published the concept as work in progress at CHI [3] and perhaps it is now time to look into a realistic implementation using such a laser projector.

[1] Hang, A., Rukzio, E., and Greaves, A. 2008. Projector phone: a study of using mobile phones with integrated projector for interaction with maps. In Proceedings of the 10th international Conference on Human Computer interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, September 02 - 05, 2008). MobileHCI '08. ACM, New York, NY, 207-216. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1409240.1409263

[2] UBIPROJECTION 2010 http://eis.comp.lancs.ac.uk/workshops/ubiproject2010/

[3] Doering, T., Pfleging, B., Kray, C., and Schmidt, A. 2010. Design by physical composition for complex tangible user interfaces. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 3541-3546. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1754015

Enrico Rukzio visits us in Essen, projections everywhere

On Wednesday and Thursday Enrico visited our group in Essen. He gave a part of my lecture on user interface engineering talking about mobile interaction with the real world. He include interesting examples, such as QR-code/NFC/RFID use in Asia, SixthSense project (camera projection system to wear around the neck) and handheld mobile projections. Enrico also explained some of the multi-tag work he does at Lancaster University [1].

In the lecture we talked briefly about future devices and interfaces. I mentioned one example: projection in the large - on building scale. The 3D visualization overplayed on buildings seem impressive - at least when looking at the video. NuFormer (http://www.projectiononbuildings.com/en) has created several interesting projections - but I never have seen one in the real - so far...

Looking at the 6th sense project and on the building projections we wondered how important in may become in the future to make research results in ubicomp/HCI understandable and accessible to a wide audience. Will this replace papers in the future?

[1] Seewoonauth, K., Rukzio, E., Hardy, R., and Holleis, P. 2009. Touch & connect and touch & select: interacting with a computer by touching it with a mobile phone. In Proceedings of the 11th international Conference on Human-Computer interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (Bonn, Germany, September 15 - 18, 2009). MobileHCI '09. ACM, New York, NY, 1-9. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1613858.1613905

Andrew Greaves presents a study on photo browsing using projector phones

Since Enrico Rukzio (my first PhD student) went to Lancaster he discovered and advanced a very exciting topic for mobile interaction: mobile projector/projector phones. His group has a great presencs at this year’s mobile HCI (3 demonstrations, 2 short papers, 2 full papers, a workshop). In time for the conference the first projector phone appeared on the market (Cking Epoq EGP-PP01) - as to highlight the timeliness of the work.

The mobile projector study [1] revealed several interesting aspects. 1) it is faster to browser on the phone screen than using a project, 2) users do a lot of context switches between projection and device – even nothing is displayed on the screen, 3) the users see a great value in it (even if they may be slower). I am really looking forward to further results in this area. It may be significantly change the way we use mobile phones!

PS: see Enrico watching his student present I remember how exciting it is for a supervisor to just watch…

[1] Andrew Greaves, Enrico Rukzio. Evaluation of Picture Browsing using a Projector Phone. 10th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (Mobile HCI 2008). Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2-5 September 2008.