Article

Distributed physical interfaces with shared phidgets

Authors:

Nicolai Marquardt,

Saul GreenbergAuthors Info & Claims

TEI '07: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction

Pages 13 - 20

https://doi.org/10.1145/1226969.1226973

Published: 15 February 2007 Publication History

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Abstract

Tangible interfaces are best viewed as an interacting collection of remotely-located distributed hardware and software components. The problem is that current physical user interface toolkits do not normally offer distributed systems capabilities, leaving developers with extra burdens such as device discovery and management, low-level hardware access, and networking. Our solution is Shared Phidgets, a toolkit for rapidly prototyping distributed physical interfaces. It offers programmers 3 ways to access and control remotely-located hardware, and the ability to create abstract devices by transforming, aggregating and even simulating device capabilities. Network communication and low-level access to device hardware are handled transparently, regardless of device location.

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Dominiak JWalczak AStefanidi EAdamkiewicz KGrudzień KNiess JWoźniak P(2024)ProtoBricks: A Research Toolkit for Tangible Prototyping & Data PhysicalizationProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661573(476-495)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661573
Karolus JKiss FEckerth CViot NBachmann FSchmidt AWozniak P(2021)EMBody: A Data-Centric Toolkit for EMG-Based Interface Prototyping and ExperimentationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34571425:EICS(1-29)Online publication date: 29-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3457142
Ledo DHouben SVermeulen JMarquardt NOehlberg LGreenberg SMandryk RHancock MPerry MCox A(2018)Evaluation Strategies for HCI Toolkit ResearchProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3173610(1-17)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3173610
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Index Terms

Distributed physical interfaces with shared phidgets
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction devices
      1. Touch screens
    2. Interaction paradigms
  2. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. Interface design prototyping
      2. User centered design

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Reviews

Reviewer: Xavier Ferre

Shared phidgets represent a step ahead in the phidgets or physical widgets concept. Phidgets allow hardware elements to be dealt with in a simple way, just as graphical user interface widgets are dealt with. In addition, shared phidgets offer the possibility to control phidgets distributed over the Internet, so that they work together. The shared phidgets library encompasses a distributed model-view-controller approach, hiding from the programmer most of the networking details. Its architecture offers three alternative ways for phidget programming: via the shared dictionary (a common data space), via phidget objects, or via interface skins (the simplest way). This range of possibilities makes the shared phidgets toolkit a very complete proposal that may accommodate a wide variety of design programming needs. The toolkit includes a shared data space with the possibility of adding semantic metadata, and a set of high-level tools to ease the programming effort. The shared phidgets toolkit is well presented with figures that adequately illustrate the main features of the proposal. Nevertheless, the reader needs to be familiar with the phidgets concept in order to fully understand what the shared phidgets architecture has to offer. Therefore, the main audience for this paper is programmers who know the phidgets library, and might want to expand the functionality in order to work with distributed phidgets. It may also be of interest to any programmer or software engineer who is considering the use of distributed physical interfaces, even though he or she may need further information about phidgets, which can be obtained through other sources referenced in the paper. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

TEI '07: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction

February 2007

296 pages

ISBN:9781595936196

DOI:10.1145/1226969

Conference Chairs:
Brygg Ullmer
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
,
Albrecht Schmidt
Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 February 2007

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TEI07

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TEI07: Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2007

February 15 - 17, 2007

Louisiana, Baton Rouge

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Overall Acceptance Rate 393 of 1,367 submissions, 29%

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Cited By

View all

Dominiak JWalczak AStefanidi EAdamkiewicz KGrudzień KNiess JWoźniak P(2024)ProtoBricks: A Research Toolkit for Tangible Prototyping & Data PhysicalizationProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661573(476-495)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661573
Karolus JKiss FEckerth CViot NBachmann FSchmidt AWozniak P(2021)EMBody: A Data-Centric Toolkit for EMG-Based Interface Prototyping and ExperimentationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34571425:EICS(1-29)Online publication date: 29-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3457142
Ledo DHouben SVermeulen JMarquardt NOehlberg LGreenberg SMandryk RHancock MPerry MCox A(2018)Evaluation Strategies for HCI Toolkit ResearchProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3173610(1-17)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3173610
McGrath WEtemadi MRoy SHartmann BZiegler JNebeling MNigay L(2015)fabryqProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems10.1145/2774225.2774835(164-173)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2774225.2774835
Savage VZhang XHartmann BMiller RBenko HLatulipe C(2012)MidasProceedings of the 25th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology10.1145/2380116.2380189(579-588)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2380116.2380189
Bardram JGueddana SHouben SNielsen SKonstan JChi EHöök K(2012)ReticularSpacesProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2207676.2208689(2845-2854)Online publication date: 5-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2207676.2208689
Marquardt NDiaz-Marino RBoring SGreenberg SPierce JAgrawala MKlemmer S(2011)The proximity toolkitProceedings of the 24th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology10.1145/2047196.2047238(315-326)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2011
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Cvijikj IMichahelles F(2011)The Toolkit Approach for End-user Participation in the Internet of ThingsArchitecting the Internet of Things10.1007/978-3-642-19157-2_4(65-96)Online publication date: 24-Mar-2011
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Marquardt NGross TCarpendale SGreenberg SCoelho MZigelbaum JIshii HJacob RMaes PPederson TShaer OWakkary R(2010)Revealing the invisibleProceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction10.1145/1709886.1709896(41-48)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2010
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Phalke ALysecky S(2010)Adapting the eBlock Platform for Middle School STEM ProjectsIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2009.413:2(152-164)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2010
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Reviews

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here