Roman Graebsch’s research while affiliated with IT University of Copenhagen and other places

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 for dynamic NFC-displays, which combine the physical interaction with NFC-tagged objects and the visual output capabilities of public displays. We show that a grid of NFC-tags can be used to implement direct mobile interaction with public displays in general and a highly interactive multiplayer game in particular. Our study shows that users appreciate this physical, NFC-based mobile interaction, although technical advances are still necessary in order to improve its recognition rate of about 70%. The study also indicates that users are willing to interact with large displays in public, but prefer private or semi-public places, where their interactions attract less attention.

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 platform for the development of more direct and personal mobile interactions with public displays for Ubiquitous and Urban Computing. We present use case scenarios, discuss the basic technology and report our experiences with two applications for information exchange and gaming.

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 the Whack-a-Mole game to show how it can improve the accessibility and usability of mobile games. This paper describes the design of the game and explores how physical interaction with dynamic NFC-displays can compensate the constraints of mobile games and enrich their gameplay.

There are many visualization tools available in infovis, but most of them are designed to display customized visualisations for specific data sets. PULSE is an approach to handle various time based data sets, no matter which problem domain is addressed. Therefore time based data is organized in streams of events, each having at least a name, starting time and duration. PULSE provides a basic interface to enable the user to compare, analyze and visualize such data by conerting XML-based input files into a zoom- and panable visuali- sation. In this paper we want to discuss related work, then describe the design of PULSE and propose future improvements.