Dietrich Kammer

• Prof. Dr.-Ing.
• Professor (Full) at Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Dresden – University of Applied Sciences

Kickstarting Application Development for Elastic Displays with Do-it-yourself Hardware Assembly Instructions

Virtual environments are well-researched in the HCI community. Many approaches such Cave Automatic Virtual Environments (CAVEs) and head-mounted displays require specialized hardware and are optimized for single users. Moreover, the focus on visualization neglects other sensory input we know from the real world such as odor or spatial sound, which...

We report our experience in two installations of a course on data visualization that featured project-based learning. Given the rationale of this approach, we show which input was provided when necessary for the students to achieve their goals. We also discuss and compare the tools we found useful for students to accomplish their goals. Fitting pro...

Data visualization is a powerful tool to cope with the demands of our current information age. In order to understand and being able to develop visualizations for specific use cases, data visualization activities (vis activities) have been proposed in recent years. These highly effective tools focus on practical relevance, reflection, and discussio...

Cycling stimulates the human mind and body in manifold ways. However, even on a leisure ride, certain waypoints or destinations must be reached. Therefore, orientation is a crucial task for every cyclist. Vibrotactile systems for cyclists do not clog up the visual and auditory senses needed to experience the immediate environment. However, our lite...

Exploring the phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in urban planning and governance, this article reviews most current smart city developments and outlines the future potential of AI, especially in the context of participatory urban design. It concludes that especially the algorithmic analysis and synthesis of large data sets gen...

Building and maintaining knowledge about specific interface technologies is a challenge. Current solutions include standard file-based document repositories, wikis, and other online tools. However, these solutions are often only available in intranets, become outdated and do not support the acquisition of knowledge in an efficient manner. The effor...

Rigorous data science is interdisciplinary at its core. In order to make sense of high-dimensional data, data scientists need to enter into a dialogue with domain experts. We present Glyphboard, a visualization tool that aims to support this dialogue. Glyphboard is a zoomable user interface that combines well-known methods such as dimensionality re...

Business Intelligence applications often handle data sets that contain uncertain values. In this contribution, we focus on product costing, which deals with the average costs of product components-that vary significantly based on many factors such as inflation, exchange rates, and commodity prices. After experts estimate the uncertainty information...

Novel shape-changing interfaces promise to provide a rich haptic experience for human-computer interaction. As a specific instance of shape-changing interfaces, Elastic Displays provide large interaction surfaces that can be temporally deformed using force-touch. The unique property of these displays is that they automatically return to their initi...

When working with a given high-dimensional data set, data analysts often use different machine-learning algorithms to calculate clusters and classifications. However, it is difficult to ascertain which differences occur across these algorithm versions. For a human-readable visualization, dimensionality reduction methods are used to achieve two-dime...

Many digital interfaces for audio effects still resemble racks and cases of their hardware counterparts. For instance, DSP-algorithms are often adjusted via direct value input, sliders, or knobs. While recent research has started to experiment with the capabilities offered by modern interfaces, there are no examples for productive applications such a...

With the internet, massively heterogeneous data sources need to be understood and classified to provide suitable services to users such as content observation, data exploration, e-commerce, or adaptive learning environments. The key to providing these services is applying machine learning (ML) in order to generate structures via clustering and clas...

Industrial applications can benefit considerably from the overwhelming amount of still growing resources such as websites, images, texts, and videos that the internet offers today. The resulting Big Data Problem does not only consist of handling this immense volume of data. Moreover, data needs to be processed, cleaned, and presented in a user-frie...

Business Intelligence applications often handle data sets that contain uncertain values. In this work we focus on product costing, which deals with the average costs of product components - that vary significantly based on many factors such as inflation, exchange rates, and commodity prices. After experts provide the uncertainty information for sin...

Data Analysts have to deal with an ever-growing amount of data resources. One way to make sense of this data is to extract features and use clustering algorithms to group items according to a similarity measure. Algorithm developers are challenged when evaluating the performance of the algorithm since it is hard to identify features that influence...

The evaluation of innovative user interface concepts using virtual reality technology faces many challenges. In this paper, we discuss current limitations regarding the integration of virtual reality in a participatory design process. Furthermore, we propose guidelines including visualization and interaction techniques that address aspects such as...

Data volume is increasing steadily. Visualization helps to handle not only the volume, but the ever increasing diversity of data. Visualization gives answers faster and reveals information that would go unnoticed and therefore unused in decision making. The challenge we address in this contribution is how visualizations can be created semi-automati...

received Best Paper Award A novel generation of (e.g. touch-driven) applications leads to a new universe of interaction paradigms and a growing need for simple, inspiring and smart interfaces. A system intended for non-experts should only present information the user needs to solve his task, instead of confronting him with the large and complex un...

We introduce ESTER, an interactive 3D real-time (Eye-tracking) Science Tool and Experiment Runtime for investigating visual attention by means of the aggregation and representation of three-dimensional gaze paths and positions.

In this paper, we describe a software interface for controlling light environments using segmented light sources based on OLED arrays. We propose requirements for a tool that can be used to author specific light scenarios. Both the technical view and the user view on the system are addressed. We describe the concept of creating such an interface an...

Despite increased presence of gestural and multimodal user interfaces in research as well as daily life, development of such systems still mostly relies on programming concepts which have emerged from classic WIMP user interfaces. This workshop proposes to explore the gap between attempts to formalize and structure development for multimodal interf...

In this paper, we investigate interaction of children with interactive tabletops in kindergarten environments. In our understanding, such environments feature a certain degree of supervision, group play, as well as sole activities. In contrast to the traditional desktop PC workplace, interactive tabletops encourage communication and social interact...

Interactive tabletops foster collaborative work by supporting face-to-face communication and by offering an interactive surface to continually visualize and integrate the current state of work. Through multi-touch technology, multiple fingers and even parts of the hand can be recognized. Hence, natural interaction with graphical objects can be enha...

The periodic table is the first means of chemists to structure their field of research. It comprises all chemical elements with their most prominent features. The system is so important that students of chemistry usually learn it by heart during their university education. Scientists in the field of human-computer interaction lack such a concise sy...

Since multitouch interfaces are steadily moving out of the experimental niche, the demand for comprehensive programming support increases. Between the formation of de facto standards for multitouch gestures by the industry, and continued research and experimentation by developers or academia, the abstraction of gesture properties becomes essential....

Interaction design for mobile applications is challenging due to the diversity of technologies and devices. In addition, the now ubiquitous multi-touch screens demand novel and engaging interface metaphors. In this paper, we report insights and three practical results from a workshop with undergraduate students. The aim was to experiment with new t...

Perceiving depth and spatial relations between objects in virtual environments is challenging and can be facilitated by the rendering process in 3D graphics applications. Often the perspective projection is not sufficient to visualize all necessary information because the projected image can lead to position and orientation ambiguity. Therefore, ad...

A huge amount of data is produced continually in areas of application like entertainment, industry, and science. Contemporary technologies and three-dimensional computer graphics are qualified to process and to visualize this data. However, users are more and more faced with a flood of information, unable to efficiently process the information prov...

User interfaces in enterprise systems are primarily based on visualizations such as tables and forms, which are state-of-the-art since the middle of the 1990s. Additionally, most information is presented in a textual way and offers little capabilities to change the mode of presentation or the level of detail. The authors argue that these deficienci...

Dieser Beitrag behandelt den aktuellen Stand der Forschung und Technik für das deklarative Programmieren von Multi-Touch-Gesten. Die dafür notwendige Abstraktion von Gesteneigenschaften führt zu mehr Wiederverwendung von Gestenerkennungscode und Herausbildung von Mustern für die Gestenentwicklung. Zudem wird die Entwicklung neuer Gesten basierend a...

This paper presents GeForMTjs, a library which features an abstract way of representing multi-touch gestures. A domain specific language for multi-touch gestures, Gesture Formalization for Multi-touch (GeForMT), is adapted to the needs of web development. Web standards are addressed and mouse input is incorporated as well. A short overview of relat...

In Enterprise Information Systems, users are facing complex user interfaces with a multitude of functionalities. These interfaces still rely on the WIMP-paradigm including forms, tables and dashboards, which are meant to be used with mouse and keyboard. This contribution argues that there is a gap between the increased process complexity and the tr...

In this paper we describe DepthTouch, an installation which explores future interactive surfaces and features elastic feedback, allowing the user to go deeper than with regular multi-touch surfaces. DepthTouch's elastic display allows the user to create valleys and ascending slopes by depressing or grabbing its textile surface. We describe the expe...

This paper provides a report about a framework that uses a variety of standards. Readers interested in 3D computer graphics or component-oriented technology in C++ will find a report about the integration of various standards by relying on yet another standard for component-oriented software engineering. The highly successful Java standard called O...

Multi-touch devices and gesture tracking have recently been established as tools for collaborative interactive spaces. Innovative application concepts and applicable scenarios in which gesture-based interaction has advantages instead of traditional WIMP User Interfaces are necessary. In this article, the results of a series of workshops conducted d...

Motivation -- Multi-touch surfaces offer a great potential for collaborative activities due to direct interaction and engaging user experiences. User input is no longer mediated through indirect devices like keyboard or mouse; instead, users can work in parallel or quickly alternate between interacting persons. So far, only standard manipulation ge...

The field of Visual Analytics attempts to identify phenomena, guidelines, and algorithms to generate images suitable to communicate information efficiently and effectively. The benefit of using information visualizations is that the represented data can be quickly perceived and comprehended by the viewer. Research of novel visualization and interac...

Accustomed to traditional user experiences with mouse and keyboard, designers are challenged to break free and find new and compelling approaches to interaction design for natural user interfaces. Tangible and embodied interaction works in parallel, is quick, and allows cooperative work. This exploration serves to inspire and provoke critical refle...

Developing multi-touch applications is a great challenge for developers: they have to adopt a novel interaction paradigm, but lack suitable tools and reliable design guidelines. The goal of Liquid consists in introducing the concept of visual programming to multi-touch technology, implementing a promising approach to overcome the difficulties in de...

Die Multitouch-Technologie bereichert die Mensch-Computer-Interaktion um die Möglichkeit, Gesten mit den Fingern direkt auf einer planaren Oberfläche auszuführen. Die Werkzeuge zur Gestaltung und Programmierung traditioneller grafischer Benutzeroberflächen sind allerdings für die Bedienung durch Tastatur und Maus optimiert. Der vorliegende Beitrag...

In the future, environments equipped with interaction surfaces sensitive to touch input will be a key factor to enable ambient intelligence. The user’s fingers become input devices, allowing simple and intuitive interaction, like the manipulation of digital objects. However, people are used to everyday applications offering a wide variety of menu c...

Multi-touch is a technology which offers new styles of interaction compared to traditional input devices like keyboard and mouse. Users can quickly manipulate objects or execute commands by means of their fingers and hands. Current multi-touch frameworks offer a set of standard gestures that are easy to use when developing an application. In contra...

Multi-touch hardware has only recently entered the mainstream of information technology. Interaction designers, product developers and users have been influenced by this development. In order to build multi-touch applications, programmers have created various reusable frameworks. To obtain an overview of this diversity, we present a list of criteri...

Tangible and Gesture-Based Interfaces are made possible by hardware like the Microsoft® Surface Device. Despite the commitment of big business, the killer application is yet to be found. To address this challenge, we investigate the innovation process. Against this background, a workshop was set up and conducted. The clarification of focuses during...

Classification methods such as social tagging provide an easy way to annotate documents with metadata and describe them from various points of view. Frequently used visualization methods like tag clouds offer a limited access to the network of tags and fail at illustrating implicit relationships. Developing user interfaces which reveal these relati...

Gestural interfaces have been the subject of research in the HCI community for a long time. In contrast to existing examples of multimodal interfaces, which combine free-hand gestures with speech, this paper proposes the combination of both touch and point gestures. Touch requires users to actually initiate contact with the interaction surface, whe...