Baby Interactive Angus Clark from Bristol shows how his new company's product bbPod provides activities for babies from 4 months old. Enlighten Enlighten is a product from a new company called Visible Interactions Ltd. Jonathan Green explains how this interactive tool for discovery can be deployed to enhance sensory experiences in museums, caves and many other visitor attractions. Aspecto Marek Bell demonstrates 3 software products developed by Aspecto, a freeware development and software consultancy formed in conjunction with Malcolm Hall during their PhD studies at Glasgow. Pure Ability An Equator PhD student at Bristol, Ian Anderson, shows the products developed by his new company, Pure Ability, to help hospital patients with minimum movement to call for assistance.
Ultrasonics
Michael McCarthy of the University of Bristol demonstrates his research into ultrasonic position sensing for wearable computers.
Voodoo I-O Nicolas Villars of Lancaster University outlines his work with tangible user interfaces. ARTECT A demonstration by Alastair Hampshire, University of Nottingham, on the ARTECT tool which is designed to allow designers and other non-technical users to film Augmented Reality applications. DRS (Digital Replay System) This software has been developed in a collaboration between the University of Nottingham and the National eScience Centre in Edinburgh to support social scientists in the analysis of data. It is described here by Stefan Rennick Egglestone from the University of Nottingham. Replayer The Replayer tool allows an augmented playback of video footage from interactive mobile devices to assist in the evaluation of usability studies and it is demonstrated here by Alastair Morrison of the University of Glasgow. Equip2 The development and functions of the Equip2 data sharing platform are explained by Prof Chris Greenhalgh from the Mixed Reality Lab, Nottingham.
Can You See Me NowCan You See Me Now was a project in which on-line players using the Internet competed against performers in the streets, using a shared mixed reality environment. Martin Flintham from the Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham describes the results.Uncle Roy All Around YouMartin Flintham continues by outlining the Uncle Roy All Around You application, where members of the public on the streets have to collaborate with on-line players to achieve a common goal.Equator Public Performance ThemeStuart Reeves from the University of Nottingham gives an overview of augmented reality applications in public performance situations.Thrill Laboratory TechnologiesHolger Schnädelbach from Nottingham describes a public event held at the Dana Centre in London to explore the nature of "thrill".
The City ProjectBarry Brown, a researcher at the University of Glasgow, demonstrates the work to create shared experiences for museum visitors and tourists in mixed reality spaces.Seamful Games I and IIScott Sherwood from the University of Glasgow shows the development of the mixed reality game applications Feeding Yoshi and the strategy game, Castles
Andy Law and Andy Boucher demonstrate 3 applications developed by the Interaction Research Studio in the Design Department of Goldsmiths College:
Drift TableAn interactive table controlled by weight to take the spectator drifting across a landscape provided by Google Earth.Local BarometerAn exploration of the domestic boundaries using wind direction to dictate the content for information screens around the house.Plane TrackerExploring interactive relationships with aircraft to provide a unique experience in the home.Ubiquitous TechnologiesMark Stringer of the University of Sussex describes the research techniques used to design ubiquitous technologies for the domestic environment.
ChromariumHilary Smith from the University of Sussex demonstrates this educational software which enables children to experiment with mixing colours.Hunting of the SnarkThe Hunting of the Snark application was developed by researchers from Sussex, Nottingham and Bristol and allowed groups of children to discover and reflect on new kinds of mixed reality spaces.Ambient WoodEric Harris of the University of Sussex describes how the Ambient Wood project provided a playful learning experience where children could explore and reflect upon a physical environment that had been augmented with a medley of digital abstractions, designed by researchers at Sussex, Nottingham, Bristol, RCA and Southampton.Public EngagementPlaying and learning devices developed as part of Equator are demonstrated by Eric Harris, University of Sussex.Chawton HouseSouthampton researcher Don Cruikshank, describes a project at Chawton House, originally the home of Jane Austen's brother and now a working library. The aim of the project is to enable curators and teachers to create their own context to provide an interactive experience for visiting schoolchildren.
The Equator team at Goldsmiths (formerly at the RCA) focussed on the Domestic Experience, using design-driven methods to develop technologies for everyday life. Seeking to move beyond the hype surrounding ‘internet appliances’ and ‘smart home’ systems, we investigated potential roles for domestic technologies through experimental and collaborative design approaches. Our main collaborators on the Domestic Experience were the University of Nottingham, the University of Sussex, the University of Lancaster and University College London.
The IRC brought together researchers from eight different institutions and a variety of disciplines which address the technical, social and design issues in the development of new inter-relationships between the physical and digital. A series of experience projects engaged with different user communities to develop new combinations of physical and digital worlds and explore how these may be exploited and how these may enhance the quality of everyday life. A series of research challenges explored (a) new classes of device which link the physical and the digital, (b) adaptive software architectures and (c) new design and evaluation methods, which draw together approaches from social science, cognitive science and art and design. Equator involved over 60 researchers, with a range of expertise encompassing computer science, psychology, sociology, design and the arts. Equator aimed to forge a clearer understanding of what it means to live in an age when digital and physical activities not only coexist but cooperate. This is the age we are now entering, and it promises radical change in how we communicate, interact, work and play – that is, how we live. But to fulfil that promise requires more than new technology. We need equally new ways of thinking about technology, and thus also about ourselves. Everyone recognises that the computer is moving beyond the workplace. As digital systems (like the Web) converge with computer networks and cellular phone communications, new devices and services proliferate – many of them mobile, or embedded in the environment. Yet few people fully grasp the potential impact of such technological fluidity and ubiquity. Most current research is still rooted in the workaday world of the desk-bound PC. But look at the possibilities – for our home life, our schooling, community care, even our city streets. These are just some of the areas which Equator explored, through the development of coherent new systems and devices. Ultimately, however, we were less concerned with solutions to specific design problems than with the bigger picture these solutions entail. This is what united so diverse a community of researchers. For it is only by sketching the bigger picture that we can begin to fulfil the promise offered by our new age, and so improve the quality of everyday life in years to come. Why ‘Equator’?For the geographer, the equator is a significant marker, dividing the two hemispheres of the earth. For the sailor, it is just a line on a map. As an experience, crossing the equator is meaningless: there’s nothing to it. In October 2000, when this Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) launched its work – a grand armada setting forth – it seemed apt to sail under the banner of ‘Equator’. The name symbolised an ideal: the ability to cross the border between physical and digital experience without a thought, thereby enabling each environment to complement the other, as equals in a kind of dynamic balance. Over two years later, Equator retained its central aim of discerning and supporting a variety of relationships between the physical and digital realms. Indeed, one key indication of progress, of deepening research, is that it started to question the assumptions behind its own name. Do users always want a seamless divide? Equator’s success in achieving its aims is demonstrated by the final review for the EPSRC, which judged the IRC to be “outstanding” and “internationally leading”. The report concluded that “The ‘Equator brand’ has established not only its own reputation, but that of EPSRC, the UK and the IRC ‘concept’.”
FriendPhone
FriendPhone supports the sharing of information about location, time spent at location, phone profile, nearby peers. Before making a call FriendPhone users can quickly see where their friends are and who they are with. This allows them to form an opinion of whether it would be appropriate to make the call and, if they do, who else might be with the person they call. Additionally, information about the phone's profile (e.g. Silent, Loud, Vibrate) provides the caller the knowledge of whether any phone call they make will be heard or detected. Watchbot
The Watchbot is an MSN bot that continually tracks when users sign on or off, and their status while they are logged in. Users can view graphs of when their friends where logged in, allowing them to see when their friends signed in at the start of the day, when they went for lunch, or at which periods of the day they were busy. The Watchbot also supports an MSN style status widget that can be placed on any web page, allowing non-MSN users to see the status of any friends who do use MSN messaging. Binaries and SourceFriendPhoneFriendPhone, which runs on WM5 SmartPhones, may be downloaded here. The Visual Studio 2005 solution containing the FriendPhone source code can be found here. WatchbotThe Visual Studio 2005 solution containing the Watchbot source code may be found here. Please note that a valid MSN account and password must be entered in the appropriate locations in the source before the Watchbot will work corretly. Curious Home Exhibition
The Interaction Research Group moved to Goldsmiths College in 2006. Listed here are members who left before the move to Goldsmiths.
Images may be downloaded here (51.2 MB zip file).
Featured Projects
The Public Performance project emerged in the second half of Equator as a result of various reflections on earlier public performances and devices, alongside a growing interest in artistic and performance applications of ubiquitous and mixed reality technologies at various Equator partners, most notably Lancaster and Nottingham. The term ‘public performance’ has two broad but closely related meanings here. The first is the use of technologies to create live performance events. The second concerns the way in which people implicitly perform their interactions with technologies in highly public settings such as museums, galleries and science centres. Both of these share a common set of concerns and design challenges. Early explorations by Jen Sheridan and Alan Dix at Lancaster on technology support for performance events in clubs, most notably the Schizophrenic Cyborg project, had inspired new reflections on the ways in which technology mediated performance events are structured and managed and also on the ways in which technology can foster new relationships between participants. In parallel, reflections on the design of different interfaces for public settings, drawing on the catalogue of existing Equator devices as well as on various artistic interfaces outside the project, led to a joint paper between Nottingham and Bristol on design strategies for ‘spectator interfaces’, suggesting ways in which interfaces might be made expressive, secretive, magical or suspenseful. This then led to further joint work that explored how interactive technologies can contribute to the framing of performances in public settings, how this leads to important distinctions between audience members (who are inside the frame and therefore aware of the performance) and bystanders (who are outside the frame and potentially unwitting) and how framing relates to orchestration, the ongoing management of performances from behind the scenes, a topic of previous Equator studies of performance such as Uncle Roy All Around You. This intense period of conceptual work led to a growing awareness, both within Equator and externally, of the issues involved in deploying ubiquitous technologies in highly public settings such as clubs, museums, galleries and the city streets, drawing attention to the need for designers to consider the impact on spectators and bystanders and how this should be managed. The trajectory of this work swung back to a practical focus in the final stages of Equator through three final demonstration experiences: Fairground: Thrill Laboratory, Enlighten at MAGNA, and Flypad, all of which consciously reflect different aspects of our design frameworks for public interfaces. Other Ubiquitous & Pervasive Computing Courses
eScience
Domestic Environment
Media Spaces
CSCW
Collaborative Learning
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