Readings on Ubiquitous Computing

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Most of the course is based on a selection of readings from the list below. We read them ahead of a class, added a discussion point or two on the blog, then discussed them in class (sometimes with a student presentation that summarized the main points). We did not get through all of the case studies. Indeed, most of the course was spent on the foundational material. Still the case studies are good resources for students who wish to choose and perhaps present a topic within Ubicomp.

On a more general level, many of the readings on this list - particular the parts before the case studies - could also double as a foundational PhD reading list to Ubicomp.

Confirmed Readings

Wednesday, September 15: Toolkits and Vogel's Proximity paper

We will jump into coding as soon as possible. Here's a brief introduction why toolkits are so important, and to the proximity toolkit in particular.

  1. Vogel, D. and Balakrishnan, R.
    Interactive public ambient displays: transitioning from implicit to explicit, public to personal, interaction with multiple users. Proceedings of the 17th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, ACM New York, NY, USA (2004), 137-146.
  2. Diaz-Marino, R. and Greenberg, S. (2010)
    The Proximity Toolkit and ViconFace: The Video. In Video Showcase, DVD Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - ACM CHI'10. (Atlanta, Georgia), ACM Press, 5 pages, April 10-15. Video and paper, demonstrated live at CHI. Duration: 4:11. (short paper and wmv).
  3. Greenberg, S. (2007)
    Toolkits and Interface Creativity. Journal Multimedia Tools and Applications (JMTA), 32(2):139-159. (Special Issue on Groupware) Springer, February.

Monday, September 20: Introduction to Proxemics

These systems illustrated some of the potential directions of Proemics. The are important not only for the systems they demonstrate, but for the philosophy behind them. The first two on reactive environments in part use ideas such as presence, proximity, and exploiting spatial layouts of spaces. The work by Ballendat represents the state of the art in a proxemic-aware system. Tat Mobile is a futuristic video where some of its devices are proximity-aware.

  1. Cooperstock, J., Fels, S., Buxton, W. & Smith, K.C.
    Reactive environments: Throwing away your keyboard and mouse, Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery (CACM), 40(9), 65-73. (1997)
  2. Buxton, W. (1997).
    Living in Augmented Reality: Ubiquitous Media and Reactive Environments. In K. Finn, A. Sellen & S. Wilber (Eds.). Video Mediated Communication. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 363-384. An earlier version of this chapter also appears in Proceedings of Imagina '95, 215-229.
  3. Ballendat, T., Marquardt, N. and Greenberg, S. (2010)
    Proxemic Interaction: Designing for a Proximity and Orientation-Aware Environment. Research report 2010-962-11, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, June. See companion video. To appear in Proc ITS, 2010
  4. Ballendat, T., Marquardt, N. and Greenberg, S. (2010)
    Proxemic Interaction: The Video. Research report 2010-963-12, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, June. Duration 3:11. See companion paper. To appear in Proc ITS, 2010
  5. Tat Mobile UI
    Future of Screen Technology. This video only has a few segments dealing with proximity, but its an interesting thought piece that could trigger you into thinking about different ways that proximity could be used.

Monday, September 27: Basic Proxemic Theory by Hall

Edward Hall lays the sociological foundations to proxemics

  1. Edward Hall
  2. Hall, E.T. The Hidden Dimension. Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y, 1966. (chapter 9 and 10 especially).
    • the PDF includes Chapters 9 and 10 only.


Wednesday, September 29: Implicit vs. Explicit Interaction by Wendy Ju

Much of Proxemic Interaction assumes some balance between implicit and explicit actions of a person. Ju discusses this.

  1. Ju, W., Lee, B.A., and Klemmer, S.R.
    Range: exploring implicit interaction through electronic whiteboard design. Proceedings of the ACM 2008 conference on Computer supported cooperative work, ACM New York, NY, USA (2008), 17-26.

Monday October 4: Ubiquitous Computing: History

Mark Weiser is considered the 'father' of ubiquitous computing. These and the other papers by him represents his vision and early thinking. Unfortunately, an early death curtailed him from seeing the massive influence he had on the CS world. The other two papers summarize Ubicomp since then and reflect on the original vision.

  1. Weiser, M.
    The computer for the 21st Century. Scientific American. 94-110, September. (1991)
  2. Weiser, M. and Brown, J.
    Designing calm technology, Powergrid Journal, v1.01, July, 1996.

Optional

  1. Weiser, M.
    Some computer science issues in Ubiquitous Computing. Communications of the ACM 36(7) July. (1993)

Wednesday, October 6: Ubiquitous Computing: Reflection

These two papers summarize Ubicomp since Weiser and reflect on the original vision.

  1. Want, R.
    An Introduction to Ubiquitous Computing. In Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals, Krum, J. (Editor), CRC Press. 2010.
  2. Bellotti, V., Back, M., Edwards, W.K., Grinter, R.E., Henderson, A., and Lopes, C.
    Making sense of sensing systems: five questions for designers and researchers. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, ACM (2002), 415-422.
  3. Rogers, Y.
    Moving on from Weiser's vision of of calm computing: engaging UbiComp experiences. In: P. Dourish and A. Friday (Eds.) Ubicomp 2006 Proceedings, LNCS 4206, pp. 404-421, Springer-Verlag. (2006)

Optional

  1. Other readings in Marquard's Section 6

October 13 / 18. Device to Device Proxemic Interactions

How can one device connect to an interact with another device based on proximity?

  1. Ramos, G., Hinckley, K., Wilson, A., and Sarin, R.
    Synchronous Gestures in Multi-Display Environments.
    Human-Computer Interaction 24, 1 (2009), 117.
  2. Kortuem, G., Kray, C., and Gellersen, H.
    Sensing and visualizing spatial relations of mobile devices.
    Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, ACM New York, NY, USA (2005), 93-102.
  3. Kray, C., Rohs, M., Hook, J., and Kratz, S.
    Group Coordination and Negotiation through Spatial Proximity Regions around Mobile Devices on Augmented Tabletops.
    3rd IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human Computer Systems, 2008. TABLETOP 2008, (2008), 1–8.

Do a quick read on these (no blog entry required)

  1. Holmquist, L., Mattern, F., Schiele, B., Alahuhta, P., Beigl, M., and Gellersen, H.
    Smart-Its Friends: A Technique for Users to Easily Establish Connections between Smart Artefacts.
    In Ubicomp 2001: Ubiquitous Computing: Third International Conference Atlanta, Georgia, USA, September 30 - October 2, 2001, Proceedings. 2001, 116.
  2. Merrill, D., Kalanithi, J., and Maes, P.
    Siftables: towards sensor network user interfaces.
    Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction, ACM (2007), 75-78.

Optional

  1. See Marquardt's Section 2
  2. Schilit, B., Adams, N., and Want, R.
    Context-Aware Computing Applications.
    Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, IEEE Workshop on, IEEE Computer Society (1994), 85-90.

October 23 / 25. Proximity: People to Large Digital Surfaces

  1. Brignull, H. and Rogers, Y.
    Enticing People to Interact with Large Public Displays in Public Spaces.
    Human-Computer Interaction, (2003).
  2. Hawkey, K., Kellar, M., Reilly, D., Whalen, T., and Inkpen, K.M.
    The proximity factor: impact of distance on co-located collaboration.
    Proceedings of the 2005 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, ACM New York, NY, USA (2005), 31-40.
  3. Shoemaker, G., Tang, A., and Booth, K.S.
    Shadow reaching: a new perspective on interaction for large displays.
    Proceedings of the 20th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, ACM New York, NY, USA (2007), 53-56.
  4. Streitz, N., Prante, T., Röcker, C., et al.
    Ambient Displays and Mobile Devices for the Creation of Social Architectural Spaces.
    Public and Situated Displays Social and Interactional Aspects of Shared Display Technologies, (2003), 387-409.
  5. Walther-Franks, B., Schwarten, L., Teichert, J., Krause, M., and Herrlich, M.
    User Detection for a Multi-touch Table via Proximity Sensors.
    Extended Abstracts of IEEE Tabletops and Interactive Surfaces 2008, (2008).

Nov. 29 / Dec. 1: Place vs Space

  1. Harrison, S. and Dourish, P. 1996. Re-Place-ing Space: The Roles of Place and Space in Collaborative Systems. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work CSCW'96 (Boston, MA), 67-76. New York: ACM.
  2. Dourish, P. 2006. Re-Space-ing Place: Place and Space Ten Years On. Proc. ACM Conf. Computer-Supported Cooperative Work CSCW 2006 (Banff, Alberta), 299-308

Topics We Will Chose From

Additional readings (including choices for your presentation) will likely center around one of these topics.

Theory: Embodied Interaction

Dourish introduces the notion of embodied interaction. While it doesn't deal specifically with proxemics, it is a more general notion that is very relevant to it and to Ubicomp.

  1. Dourish, P. (2001)
    Where the Action Is. The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. MIT Press, Cambridge MMA.

Optional

  1. Hall, E.T. The Hidden Dimension. Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y, 1966. (chapter 10 especially). We have copies of this book.
  2. Dourish, P. (2001)
    Where the Action Is. The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. MIT Press, Cambridge MMA.

Proxemic relationships between people and surfaces

How can we tune the relationship between a person and a digital surface based on proximity?

See Marquardt's Section 1

Proxemic relationships between people and mobile/desktop computers

How can we tune the relationship between a person and their mobile/desktop device based on proximity?

See Marquardt's Section 3

Proxemic relationships within multi-display environments (devices, surfaces, people)

How can we manage multiple relationships with different people and device types?

See Marquardt's Section 4

Privacy and Security

Privacy and security are very important concerns in Ubicomp systems.

Must Read

or

Highly Recommended: Design Issues

Optional: Special Topics and Others

Also see Marquardt's Section 12

More Theory

While Hall started the Proxemic theory, others have continued in it.

See Marquardt's Sections 5 and Marquardt's Sections 15

Frameworks and Toolkits for Sensing and Exploiting Proximity and other Information

What are the technical foundations that let us build proximity-aware and other ubicomp systems?

See Marquardt's Section 9

Application area: Proximity applied to media and video spaces

These papers apply proxemics to control / design various kinds of video conferencing systems

See Marquardt's Section 10

Application area: Proximity applied to Virtual Environments and Human Robot Interaction

These papers apply proxemics to control / design VE and HRI systems. This could be two topics

See Marquardt's Section 11

Application area: Proximity applied to Personal Control Devices

These papers apply proxemics, where one device can be used to control another device e.g., as a remote control

See Marquardt's Section 14