Revisiting Good Blogs: User Interface Engineering (Albrecht Schmidt, University of Stuttgart)

Albrecht Schmidt is a professor at the University of Stuttgart. His main interests include novel user interfaces and innovative applications for ubiquitous computing. His blog, Albrecht Schmidt - User Interface Engineering, serves as his note-pad, full of ideas, deep musings, and great links, including links to good scholarly papers. Below are a few of his posts:

Guests in my multimodal interaction class   
I'd love to take Dr. Schmidt's Multimodal Interaction class!  In this post, Albrecht highlights the presentations of  Nigel Davies, Marc Langheirich, and Rui Jose,  all members of the pd-net project.

Call for Papers:  Symposium on Pervasive Display Networks

Closing Keynote at AMI2011:  Beyond Ubicomp - Computing is Changing the Way we Live
(Pdf version - worth taking a look!)


Percom 2011 in Seatle, keynote


RELATED
PD-NET
"The PD-NET project aims to lay the scientific foundations for a new form of communications medium with the same potential impact on society as radio, television and the Internet. The goal is to explore the scientific challenges and to assess the new technologies required to enable the emergence of large scale networks of pervasive public displays and associated sensors. This display network will be designed and implemented to be open to applications and content from many sources and thus provide the foundation for work on a new global communications medium for information access and interaction." 


Note:  One of my interest is public displays in public spaces.  If you are interested, take a look at my Flicker collection, Ubiquitous Sightings of Urban Screens: Interactive Displays, Kiosks, and Digital Signage.

"Does TV Content Work on DOOH" - Words of Wisdom from Bill Gerba

Bill Gerba blogs about DOOH, which stands for "Digital-Out-of-Home", focusing on displays and kiosks in public spaces that offer dynamic and/or interactive content, usually for the purpose of advertising and marketing.   If this is an area that interests you, take a look at Bill Gerba's most recent post, "Does TV Content Work on DOOH?  Maybe, Maybe Not" - WireSpring: Digital Signage Insider (9/24/10)


Gerba refers to a "Marketing Funnel" graphic to illustrate some of his points.  Six of the seven concepts represented in the graphic, shared below, might be useful to think about for people working in the field of public displays for purposes other than advertising or marketing:





Most of us have noticed that there are many more large-screen displays around.   Some displays intrusively attempt to grab your attention through loud and garish informercial-like content.   Some are designed to be interactive and pleasant, but go un-noticed by passers-by at all!   


There still is a long road to go.


The good news is that a small (and growing) number of scholarly researchers are focusing their attention to displays situated in public spaces, as mentioned in my previous post, "PD-NET Project: Exploring large-scale networks...of pervasive public displays."

PD-NET Project: "Exploring..large scale networks of pervasive public displays..."

I love the concept of interactive, networked public displays!   The PD-NET project has a fairly new website and a Facebook page.  If this interests you, take the time to learn about the PD-NET project, a collaborative effort between researchers from several different universities in Europe. I'd like to see this take hold in the US.  


PD-NET Project Objectives (From the PD-NET Website):

• To create enabling technologies for large-scale pervasive display networks through the design, development, and evaluation of a robust, scalable, distributed and open platform for interconnecting displays and their sensors.
• To establish Europe as the international centre for work on pervasive display networks.
• To address key scientific challenges that may inhibit the widespread adoption of pervasive display network technology:  Tensions between privacy and personalization, situated displays, business and legislative requirements, User Interaction.

Here is a list of participating universities and researchers, taken from the PD-NET website:

Participants from Lancaster University (UK):

Nigel Davies

Adrian Friday

Rachel Cooper

Hans Gellersen

Sara Clinch

Participants from University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany):

Albrecht Schmidt

Florian Alt

Dominik Bial

Participants from University of Lugano (Italy):

Marc Langheinrich

Nemanja Memarovic

Ivan Elhart

Participants from University of Minho (Portugal):

Rui José

Nuno Otero

Publication

J. Müller, F. Alt, D. Michelis, and A. Schmidt, "Requirements and Design Space for Interactive Public Displays," in Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia (Multimedia 2010), to appear, 2010.

COMMENT

If you are familiar with this blog, you know that I am passionate about interactive displays, especially in public spaces.  I've devoted numerous posts to this topic on this blog, and also on  The World Is My Interactive Interface, a blog I started a few years ago when I was working on projects for large interactive displays.  


I am interested in how interactive displays, of any size, can be accessible and universally designed, especially those that can inter-operate with mobile devices, including devices that support communication for people with special needs.


SOMEWHAT RELATED
Here are links to some of my previous blogposts related to the topic of interactive displays in public spaces.  Some have links to scholarly publications.  
What is DOOH and Why Should We Care? (DOOH- Digital Out-Of-Home)
Interactive Displays and Interaction (Presentation via Daniel Michelis)
Thoughts about technology on a cruise ship, and other reflections
Multi-touch and gesture interaction out-and-about
UPDATED: More News, Videos, and Links about Multi-Touch and Screen Technologies
Technology-Supported Shopping and Entertainment User Experience at Ballantyne Village:  "A" for concept, "D" for touch screen usability.
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame (In a Hospital)
Think Globally, Act Locally:  Exploring the Problem Space - Top-down, bottom-up, local and the global...