Post-Desktop User Interfaces iStuff and the Search for the Great Unified Input Theory Jan Borchers Stanford University CS547, Oct 17, 2002

The Ubicomp Vision “The most profound technologies are those that disappear.” [Weiser] We only notice tools when they fail us. [Heidegger]

Creating GUIs (1960s)

Creating GUIs Today

Creating Ubicomp Interfaces Today

The Idea A Physical User Interface Toolkit to Facilitate Ubicomp UI Research

Others Have Been There HandyBoard [MIT] Tangible Bits [MIT] Context Toolkit [GaTech] Phidgets [Calgary] Etc...

Leveraging Infrastructure iRoom iROS Event Heap

Event Heap Architecture Event Heap Application2Application1 TCP/IP connection

Event Heap Architecture Event Heap MultiBrowse RMultiBrowse S TCP/IP connection IE “show URL” Example: MultiBrowse a URL to a different machine

iStuff Architecture Event Heap Proxy (on PC) iStuff Device Transceiver iStuff component Application Wireless connection TCP/IP connection

iStuff Architecture Event Heap Proxy (on PC) wireless button RF Receiver iStuff component Application RF connection TCP/IP connection “button1 pressed” iButton example

iStuff Architecture Event Heap Proxy (on PC) portable radio FM transmitter iSpeaker component Application FM connection TCP/IP connection “speak text” iSpeaker example

iStuff Components iSpeaker iLight iBuzzer Anoto Pen iMouse iMike iDog X10 iStylus iSlider RF iButtons Input Output

import iwork.eheap2.*; class speaktext { static void main(String []args) { try{ EventHeap theHeap=new EventHeap(args[0]); Event myEvent=new Event("AudioEvent"); myEvent.setPostValue("AudioCommand", "Read"); myEvent.setPostValue("Text", args[1]); theHeap.putEvent(myEvent); } catch(Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } Event Heap App to Speak Text >speaktext iw-room2.stanford.edu "Hello World"

iStuff Architecture: PatchPanel Event Heap PatchPanelProxy (on PC) wireless button RF Receiver iStuff component Application RF connection TCP/IP connection “button1 pressed” “mark video” Intermediary for abstraction

PatchPanel

Evaluation Start the Room iPen iPong SuperSlider

Evaluation iClub Meeting Annotation

Great Unified Input Theory Why are we doing this? “Mouse & Keyboard” for Ubicomp? Selection and Focus for Ubicomp? Taxonomy of Modalities iWall

Post-Desktop Era We are living in exciting times!

Heidegger revisited “Technology is the extension into the physical world of our intentionality”?

Thanks! Maureen Stone Merrie Ringel Michael Champlin Josh Tyler Tico Ballagas Ya’ir Aizenman Joyce Ho...and many others! istuff.stanford.edu