A simulation-driven approach to user interface specification based on a muliscale visual workspace for supporting collabrative creativity
Final Report Abstract
The goal of this research project was to address a lack of digital tool support for creative and collaborative activities in user interface design. The research project was carried out based on a dialogue between design methods, digital design tools and practical case studies embedded into academic and industrial practice. Only minor modifications to the initial research goals were necessary as our detailed investigations and observations revealed that the techniques practiced within prototyping activities were already supported by mainstream tools and that the activities are carried out mostly individually and rather late in the design process when collaboration and creativity is less important. Hence in favor of other, more informal, creative and collaborative design methods, prototyping methods and modeling techniques were discarded from the investigation. The research project identified strategies for supporting material and social design collaboration within the digital infrastructure of a computation-augmented design studio setting. By utilizing multiple input and output devices for collaboration, a lively and playful integration of collaborative techniques and design methods with digital tools was proposed. The project also evaluated the applicability of system designs and digital workspaces, interaction techniques, information visualization methods and interaction design methods in relation to this approach. Case studies with students and industrial practitioners provided a simulated testing environment. Effective support for enabling interdisciplinary teams to rapidly develop and specify design ideas, artifacts and interactive simulations with digital and hybrid digital technologies was demonstrated. This included brainstorming, sketching and documentation activities within early design process stages. Furthermore, support for actively assisting design teams in their characteristically complex and open-ended creative tasks was developed. This included informal interaction techniques and visualization methods for design ideas, histories and collections of design artifacts. By taking care of established and effective strategies for collaboration support, obstacles in common understanding were reduced by accessible tangible interactive media that allows harnessing new potentials of social creativity. The design tools and interaction techniques that were developed and evaluated within this research project contribute to the general design space of collaborative software (CSCW), tangible user interfaces, multi-display environments, interactive spaces, multi-touch interaction and spatial computing. Nevenheless, the proposed strategies were not designed in isolation, but to complement existing workflows. Hence, combinations of interaction techniques demonstrated in each case study contribute to the design space of creativity support tools and collaborative design tools. Future research efforts may apply the interaction concepts and system designs to similar design methods or techniques. Interaction techniques for creativity and collaboration may however also be applied to other work domains than user interface design. For example, the methods presented and assessed within this research may also be useful for more general discussion, meeting or sense-making activities.
Publications
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A Cross-Device Spatial Workspace Supporting Artifact-Mediated Collaboration in Interaction. In CHI 2010 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, Atlanta, USA, p. 3787 - 3792, Apr 2010
Geyer, Florian; Reiterer, Harald
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Interactive User Interface Specifications - Supporting Collaboration and Creativity with Simulation-Driven Modelling Tools In: Pedro Isaias, lADlS Press, lADIS International Journal on WWW/Internet, p. 63-79, Aug 2010
Geyer, Florian; Memmel, Thomas; Reiterer, Harald
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AffinityTable - A Hybrid Surface for Supporting Affinity Diagramming. In INTERACT 2011: Proceedings of 13th IFIP TC13 Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Lisbon, Portugal, Springer, p. 477-484. Sep 2011
Geyer, Florian; Pfeil, Ulrike; Budzinski, Jochen; Höchtl, Anita; Reiterer, Harald
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Designing Reality-Based Interfaces for Creative Group Work. In C&C'11: Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition, Atlanta, USA. ACM Press, p. 165-174, Nov 2011
Geyer, Florian; Pfeil, Ulrike; Höchtl, Anita; Budzinski, Jochen; Reiterer, Harald
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Harnessing the Benefits of Bimanual and Multi-finger Input for Supporting Grouping Tasks on Interactive Tabletops. In Proceedings of the Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction NordiCHI 2012, Copenhagen. Denmark, ACM Press, Oct 2012
Geyer, Florian; Höchtl, Anita; Rciterer, Harald
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IdeaVis: A Hybrid Workspace and Interactive Visualization for Paper-based Collaborative Sketching Sessions. In Proceedings of the Nordic Conference on Human-Computer interaction NordiCHI 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark, ACM Press, Oct 2012
Geyer, Florian; Budzinski, Jochen; Reiterer, Harald
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Toward Mixed-Media Design Studios. ACM Press, interactions, New York, p. 54-59, Mar 2012
Geyer, Florian; Reiterer, Harald
