The Designer's Outpost: A Task-centered Tangible Interface for Web Site Information Design

研究表明，对于某些任务，计算机输入最好是通过操纵物理对象来完成。这个项目将探索纸和像素的协作网页设计的整合。PI将研究有形和笔交互技术，以支持用于创建信息层次结构的并置协作，以及支持物理构件的版本控制以及当全部或部分物理表示不可用时操纵构件的工具和交互。PI将通过创建允许远程用户查看和操作信息空间的桌面图形用户界面，尝试更好地了解远程协作的有形信息空间的虚拟表示。他将探索使用“双板用户界面”进行混合的有形/虚拟交互，在那里，物理上相距遥远的设计师可以通过设计中的人工制品进行协作。这个项目的优势在于它在实际工作实践中的基础，正如PI的研究组和其他人所观察到的那样。为了确保原型系统的实用性，PI将对系统的不同领域进行广泛的评估，并在这些评估的基础上迭代系统设计。他将让设计师在实验室运行的原型上创建实际的信息架构，并通过在网络设计公司部署系统的工作原型来执行长期可用性研究。该项目的一个成果将是一个公开可用的视觉工具包，它可以用于跟踪平面上的物理对象，并将使人机界面研究人员能够创建基于视觉的有形用户界面，而不需要计算机视觉领域的知识。这项工作将有助于更好地理解将被跟踪的物理对象与交互式显示表面相结合的技术，还将有助于为并置和远程协作提供新的技术，以及更好地理解与大型物理信息体系结构交互的方法。

Research has shown that for some tasks computer input is best performed by manipulating physical objects. This project will explore the integration of paper and pixels for collaborative web design. The PI will investigate tangible and pen interaction techniques to support collocated collaboration for creating information hierarchies, as well as tools and interactions that support versioning of a physical artifact as well as manipulation of the artifact when all or part of the physical representation is unavailable. The PI will try to better understand virtual representations of a tangible information space for remote collaboration by creating a desktop GUI that allows remote users to see and manipulate the information space. He will explore the use of a "two-board UI" for hybrid tangible/virtual interaction, where designers in physically distant places can collaborate through the artifact under design. A strength of this project lies in its foundation in actual work practice, as observed by both the PI's research group and others. To insure the utility of the prototype system, the PI will conduct extensive evaluation of different areas of the system, and iterate system design based on these evaluations. He will have designers create actual information architectures on the prototype running in the lab, and will also perform long term usability studies by deploying a working prototype of the system in a web design firm. An outcome of the project will be a publicly available vision toolkit that can be used for tracking physical objects on a flat surface, and which will enable HCI researchers to create vision-based tangible user interfaces absent domain knowledge in computer vision. The work will contribute a better understanding of techniques for combining tracked physical objects with an interactive display surface, and will also contribute new techniques for collocated and remote collaboration, as well as a better understanding of the means of interacting with large, physical information architectures.