Ubiquitous Interaction

Assuming a future where display wallpaper, embedded loudspeakers and 3D tracking of users will be ubiquitous, our entire physical environment will become interactive. This poses unique challenges to human-computer interaction. As opposed to almost all other interactive devices, many users encounter such public interactive infrastructure for the first time. This makes the first seconds of interaction crucial and requires immediate usability. The form factor and architectural embedding of interactive infrastructure critically shape social interaction. As ubiquitous interaction is strongly embedded in everyday life, it requires quick and casual gestural interaction. From a research perspective I am interested both in the invention of novel interactive artifacts and in-the-wild studies of actual use of urban deployments. In this talk I will outline research challenges for ubiquitous interaction and present two studies. The first study investigates how we can interact with virtual sound sources in mid-air using Wave-Field Synthesis. The second study investigates how we can connect different places in public through public display media spaces.