Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
assistants, smart phones, games consoles, etc.).
Integration
into the environment
designates the progressive evanescence of the computer in the physical world: our
everyday objects are augmented with digital properties, and take part in the
interaction [THE 07]. For example, the vehicle, depending on the situation, is
informed of or signals an accident (see Figure 11.2b), and then sends this
information to other vehicles [DEL 09], [DEL 10]; or newspapers (see Figure 11.2c)
complement textual information with video on demand [MAE 09].
Mobility and integration into the environment can be combined. Thus, the
European GLOSS (
GLObal Smart Spaces
, 2001-2004) project imagined the
coupling of a personal digital assistant (PDA) with an augmented wall to display
information to the individual relating to his journey (see Figure 11.3b): the PDA
contained road information; the public wall, connected to the PDA, displayed
additional information about the weather forecast and the transport strike at the
destination. More recently, Maes and Mistry [MAE 09] envisioned the possibility
for the traveler who is late, going to the airport by taxi, to project information in real
time relating to his flight onto his boarding pass (see Figure 11.3a)
1
.
Such prototypes hypothesize a software and material infrastructure for
perception, information and/or action. This information can be public and/or
personal, offered by the current location and/or carried by the user. Borkowski
[BOR 04] uses the control between a video projector, on one hand, and a camera
fixed to the ceiling, on the other, to make every piece of paper an interactive display
surface. Conversely, the SixthSense wearable motion interface [MAE 09] is based
on a pico-video projector and a camera worn as a necklace. This principle of
wearable ICT was conceived by [ANT 02], who proposed the display of tabular
information on the fingers of a hand, in this case information relating to hotels (see
Figure 11.3c). Today, this idea is implemented in the Skinput system [HAR 10].
The variety of display surfaces (in size, width, transparency, etc.), the existence
of other output modalities (audio, for example) and at the same time the diversity of
input modalities make the
morphology of the interaction
a subject of utmost
importance. UIs are no longer reduced to classical intermediate players and are no
longer necessarily centralized in a single PC. They go:
-
from graphics to multimodal
form, involving other human senses than sight
and touch, for example;
-
from WIMP (Windows
,
Icons
,
Menus
,
Pointing devices) to post-WIMP
, going
beyond the WIMP: windows can be round, directly handled by a finger;
1 See also [SIX].
