Gregor Broll

• Diplom-Medieninformatiker
• Researcher at DOCOMO Euro-Labs

The advancement of ubiquitous computing technologies has greatly improved the availability of digital resources in the real world. Here, the authors investigate mobile interaction with tagged, everyday objects and associated information that's based on the Internet of things and its technologies. Their framework for integrating Web services and mob...

Mobile interactions with public displays are often indirect and not very convenient for multiple users at the same time. In this paper we use the physical, touch-based interaction with Near Field Communication (NFC) to investigate direct mobile interactions with public displays for multiple users. For that purpose, we adopt the Whack-a-Mole game fo...

Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging technology for mobile interaction with everyday objects and associated digital resources. Apart from simple interactions with single tags, NFC has the potential for more elaborate interactions with physical objects that comprise multiple tags and serve as physical user interfaces (UI). This paper invest...

Many current smartphones need to be recharged every day despite only average usage. This problem is intensified when phones need to track their location on a continuous basis. We provide a yet unavailable platform for accurately measuring the energy consumption of different hardware/software solutions comparing up to three variants in a mobile sett...

Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging technology for touch-based mobile interactions with single- and multi-tagged objects. Although the latter may allow for simultaneous and collaborative interactions, most prototypes were not designed for multiple users and were only evaluated with single-user interactions. In this paper, we investigate t...

This paper explores how mobile devices can provide useful multimodal feedback during interactions with NFC-tagged objects. We exemplify our approach with a mobile shopping assistant that uses haptic-visual and audio-haptic feedback to inform diabetics about the agreeability of tagged grocery products. A preliminary laboratory study shows a preferen...

Mobile devices can help to solve urban traffic problems by improving personal mobility and making transport, traveling, and commuting for individual users more flexible, sustainable, and rewarding. For that purpose, the tripzoom application combines mobility data and patterns from mobile sensing, a dynamic incentive system, and community feedback f...

The increase of urban traffic confronts individuals and transport authorities with new challenges regarding traffic management, personal mobility, sustainability, or economic efficiency. Existing resources cannot be arbitrarily extended without negative effects on pollution, costs, or quality of living and have to be used more efficiently. The SUNS...

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a technology for mobile, touch-based interaction with tagged objects that can serve as physical user interfaces (UI). Dynamic NFC-displays use a grid of NFC-tags as a physical UI and combine it with a projected application UI to enable direct interactions between mobile devices and large screens. In this paper, we...

The Keystroke-Level Model (KLM) is a model for predicting the execution time of routine tasks. Initially, it had been devised for standard keyboard-desktop settings but an extension of this model for interactions with mobile phones has been described by Holleis et al. [10]. We propose a considerable update of this KLM focusing on NFC-based applicat...

This paper presents SoloFind, a mobile retail experience system for large consumer electronic stores that helps users to retrieve product information. A tangible user interface (TUI) allows customers to collect product information via a simple, Near Field Communication (NFC) based interaction. This data can be customized, reviewed and compared at a...

Near Field Communication (NFC) can facilitate mobile interaction with everyday objects, associated digital information and ubiquitous services. Despite the simplicity of the touch-like interaction between mobile devices and tagged physical objects, most people are still unfamiliar with this physical interaction, resulting in various usability probl...

Mobile interaction with public displays is usually indirect and depends on the limited input features of mobile devices. Dynamic NFC-displays combine the simplicity and directness of mobile interaction with NFC-tagged, physical objects and the visual output capabilities of public displays. In this paper, we explore this technology as a prototyping...

Mobile devices can take advantage of physical interaction with their environment and its objects to compensate their constrained input and output capabilities. For that purpose, dynamic NFC-displays combine the physical interaction with NFC-tagged user interfaces and the output capabilities of public displays. We have adopted this technology for th...

Sharing social or contextual information on a social networking site is typically a quick and easy process using a laptop or desktop. However, on many occasions, the need to share this information will occur away from a computer. As an alternative, a mobile phone could be used. However, inputting the information via the phone can be time-consuming...

The last few years have seen two parallel trends emerge. The first of such trends is set by technologies such as Near Field Communication, 2D Bar codes, RFID and others that support the association of digital information with virtually every object. Using these technologies ordinary objects such as coffee mugs or advertisement posters can provide i...

Museums often use mobile devices and applications to let visitors explore their exhibits and interact with them in order to make the user experience more immersive and enjoyable. This paper pre- sents a mobile museum guide based on the physical interaction with a dynamic NFC-display, consisting of a grid of NFC-tags and a projected GUI. Visitors ca...

NFC and RFID technologies have found their way into current mobile phones and research has presented a variety of applications using NFC/RFID tags for interaction between physical objects and mobile devices. Since this type of interaction is widely novel for most users, there is a considerable initial inhibition threshold for them. In order to get...

The advancement of Ubicomp technologies leverages mobile interaction with physical objects and facilitates ubiquitous access to information and services. This provides new opportunities for mobile interaction with the real world, but also creates new challenges regarding the complexity of mobile applications, their interaction design and usability....

The Mobile HCI community is moving beyond the interaction between a single user and her mobile device taking the users environment into account. Mobile interaction with the real world concentrates on using mobile devices as tools to interact with real world objects. This workshop continues the successful mobile interaction with the real world works...

The last few years have seen the emergence of two parallel trends: the first of such trends is set by technologies such as Near Field Communication, 2D Bar codes and RFID that support the association of digital information with virtually every object. By using these technologies, ordinary objects such as coffee mugs or advertisement posters provide...

Physical mobile applications use mobile devices for the interaction with everyday objects to facilitate the interaction with associated information and services. In order to be able to assess their acceptance, usability and interaction design in a systematic way, this paper suggests different categories of physical mobile applications according to...

The proposed demonstration presents Collect&Drop, a new technique for Physical Mobile Interaction with the real world, its objects and associated information. Collect&Drop is integrated with the PERCI framework to interact with Web Services through the interaction with real world objects. By supporting Physical Mobile Interaction techniques such as...

Advancements in mobile technologies and decreasing charges are starting to leverage the mobile usage of the internet and its applications. This paper investigates mobile communities and explores requirements and features that make them attractive in the context of constrained mobile devices and existing Web communities. It comprises a comparison be...

The emerging technology of mobile services is gaining on importance nowadays and various applications are being developed. Context-awareness constitutes an essential part of mobile services, as it can boost the provision of new personalized services (e.g. location based services). In this paper, the concept of a UML-based context model for the simp...

Mobile devices are more and more used for mobile interactions with things, places and people in the real world. However, so far no studies have discussed which interaction techniques are preferred by users in different contexts. This paper presents an experimental comparison of four different physical mobile interaction techniques: touching, pointi...

Large public displays have become pervasive in our everyday lives, but up to now, they are mostly information screens without any interaction possibilities. Users tend to forget what they saw relatively fast after leaving such a display. In this paper, we present a new interaction technique for transferring information from a public display onto a...

Although mobile services can be used ubiquitously, their employment and the interaction with them are still restricted by the constraints of mobile devices. In order to facilitate and leverage mobile interaction with services, we present a generic framework that combines Semantic Web Service technology and Physical Mobile Interaction. This interact...

The proposed demonstration is based on the work performed in the PERCI project and presents a generic framework to access and interact with Web Services through mobile interaction with real world objects. The demonstration will put a focus on the front-end of the framework that comprises augmented posters for mobile ticketing as well as a mobile cl...

This paper reports on a methodological experiment, which was carried out in two large collaborative research projects targeted at innovative products. Video material was produced in order to visualize the project vision and solution ideas, and this video material was used in focus group discussions. The paper describes the process, the experiences...

We present Shoot & Copy, an information transfer technique that does not require visual codes that interfere with shown content on large dis-plays. By using Shoot & Copy users can capture an arbitrary sub-region of a large screen that contains pieces of data. The captured image is then analyzed and a reference to the corresponding data or the data...

In current authoring tools for location-aware applications the designer typically places trigger zones onto a map of the target environment and associates these with events and media assets. However, studies of deployed experiences have shown that the characteristics of the usually invisible ubiquitous computing infrastructure, especially limited c...

The interaction between mobile devices and physical objects in the real world is gaining more and more attention as it provides a natural and intuitive way to request services associated with real world objects. We currently see several approaches for the provision of such services. Most of them are proprietary, designed for a special application a...

This diploma thesis presents a generic approach to complex Physical Mobile Interaction that is based on the exploitation of Semantic Web Services. In this context, a framework is introduced that uses the flexibility and expressiveness of Semantic Web Service descriptions for the automatic and dynamic generation of adaptable user interfaces that sup...

Seamful design is a novel approach to Ubiquitous and Mobile Com-puting systems that reveals and exploits inevitable technical limitations and boundaries as well as their effects on seamless interaction rather than hiding them. In this paper we want to introduce its general ideas, point out common seams on the mobile phone platform and show how peop...

Seamful design is a new approach to reveal and exploit inevitable technical limitations in Ubiquitous Computing technology rather than hiding them. In this paper we want to introduce its general ideas and apply them to the design of location-aware games for mobile phones. We introduce our own seamful trading-game called "Tycoon" to explore seams on...

Driven by improved mobile information access and capture, physical mobile interaction is increasingly gaining importance. It uses and exploits the familiar interaction with real world objects in order to provide intuitive access to associated digital information and services. This development is accommo-dated by the dissemination of the "Internet o...

Although Web Services have made the leap from the desktop to mobile devices, mobile services are still much less widely used than their desktop equivalents. The Simple Mobile Services (SMS) project proposes a new generation of services designed to overcome the limitations of the current offering. Here we describe 4 focus groups (1 in Germany, 1 in...

With the advancement of Ubicomp technologies, physical objects can be tagged, support the interaction with associated information and services and finally serve as physical interfaces. This paper investigates mobile interaction with a dynamic NFC-display that uses interaction with a grid of NFC-tags to manipulate a projected application interface....

Mobile interaction with objects from the real world is gaining in popularity and importance as different mobile technologies increasingly provide the basis for the extraction and usage of information from physical objects. So far, Physical Mobile Interaction is used in rather simple ways. This paper presents a comparison and evaluation of more comp...

One of the current challenges in Mobile Computing is bringing services directly to mobile users, which is handicapped by two major hurdles: Phones and services do not interoperate as smoothly as they should and the delivered services have to be adapted to a wide range of different mobile client platforms. In order to address these problems we prese...

Mobile phones have been established as devices for the interaction with objects from the everyday world, such as posters, advertisements or points of interest. However, the usage of physical mobile applications is often still restricted by fixed content and behavior, whose authoring usually requires a considerable coding effort. This paper presents...

In this paper we describe our ongoing work and first prototypes in the area of advertising on public screens in combination with mobile devices. We are especially interested in exploiting personal user profiles and explicit input from users in order to provide appropriate advertisement content. Static displays such as paper posters as well as dynam...

Tycoon is a seamful location-based multiplayer game for mobile phones. Its gameplay is based on a simple producer-consumer cycle and is driven by competition between multiple players.

The accelerating growth of cities provides new chal-lenges for urban planning, especially related to transportation. Many existing infrastructures already operate at their limits during rush hours or large events. They need to be used more efficiently as they often cannot be extended without considera-ble negative effects for citizens such as incre...