Research

Research Focus

Graphical user interfaces have long been the dominant interface paradigm. Yet, the future world of ubiquitous computing requires novel types of interfaces. We investigate on novel user interfaces and interaction techniques that make computing more natural, more playful and more seamlessly integrated into the everyday world.

Tangible user interfaces tightly couple the physical and the digital worlds. To bridge the gap between both worlds, we use digitally-augmented physical objects (e.g. digital pen and paper) and we augment traditional digital devices by physical capabitilies (e.g. tabletop displays with tangible objects, location-sensitive smart phones). We particularly focus on social interfaces that offer support for communication and collaboration.

We are convinced that in this field, novel contributions require a comprehensive approach to interaction design. We therefore conduct field studies as an empirical grounding for our work, we generalize our findings to theoretical models, we design and implement novel user interfaces and interaction techniques, we develop software toolkits, and we continuously evaluate our approaches in user studies.

Our main application domain is knowledge work and learning (in particular structuring, organization and integration of information as well as navigation in complex document sets). Moreover, we develop solutions for security control rooms and everyday life activities. More information can be found in the project list below.

News

03.01.2012: Our new book is published: Pen-and-Paper User Interfaces
29.11.2011: Our new book is available: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Technology-enhanced Learning
21.11.2011: Invited talk by Prof. James D. Hollan (UCSD): "History-enriched Computing" in lecture hall C110 at 4:15 pm
31.10.2011: Full paper accepted at TEI 2012
28.07.2011: Invited talk by Prof. Frank Maurer (U Calgary): "Agile methods and interaction design" in lecture hall C120 at 4:00 pm
27.07.2011: The second exam of the lecture HCI will take place on Sep 30 in Room A114
04.03.2011: Our contributions at CHI 2011:
- Note: Xpaaand: Interaction Techniques for Rollable Displays
- Workshop: Child-Computer Interaction (with Smart, DFKI, Open Univ., Wolfe School, Intel)
- WIP: PLink (with UCSD)
- Workshop papers: Mobile projection (with FXPAL) and Embodied interaction

Current Projects

Xpaaand

Future generations of displays will be thin, lighweight, and flexible. In this project, we develop novel interaction techniques for displays which can be dynamically expanded and collapsed.

FoldMe

In this project, we present a novel device concept that features double-sided displays which can be folded using predefined hinges.

Hybrid Interactive Surfaces

This project focuses on designing interaction techniques for hybrid tabletop displays, which enable users to concurrently manipulate digital and physical media on one single surface.

Mobile Interaction in Mixed-Reality Environments

Within the scope of this project, we develop new concepts for the visualization of large information spaces on mobile devices. Moreover, we focus on mobile interaction design for these spaces within mixed reality environments.

Mobile Multimedia Interaction

We develop novel interaction techniques for the mobile navigation of multimedia contents.

Multi-Browsing

This project focuses on multi-device web browsing. We employ novel web page partitioning algorithms to foster the collaborative browsing of web applications using multiple devices.

Letras

Letras provides a novel toolkit for the support of pen-based interaction in mobile and ubiquitous computing settings.

Past Projects

CoScribe: Integrating paper and digital documents

CoScribe is a collaborative platform for knowledge workers. The project tightly integrates the interaction with printed and digital documents by leveraging digital pen technology. It offers novel interaction techniques for cross-media annotations, hyperlinks and tags on both types of documents.

Pen-based Musical Interaction

We are currently developing a novel instrument for live music performance which relies on digital pens and interactive surfaces

People

Research Staff

Jochen Huber - Doctoral researcher
Mohammadreza Khalilbeigi - Doctoral researcher
Roman Lisserman - Doctoral researcher

Former Research Members

Dr. Jürgen Steimle - Group head (now at MIT Media Lab)
Simon Olberding - Doctoral researcher (now at MIT Media Lab)

Students

Kathrin Ballweg - B.Sc. thesis
Christoph Baur - B.Sc. thesis
Tim Klein - Research assistant
Wolfgang Kleine - M.Sc. thesis
Patrick Ostie - B.Sc. thesis
Benjamin Petry - B.Sc. thesis
Stefan Pöschel - B.Sc. thesis
Jan Riemann - Project thesis
Patrik Schmittat - M.Sc. thesis
Martin Schmitz - B.Sc. thesis
Philipp Sowinski - B.Sc. thesis
Tarik Tahiri - B.Sc. thesis
Melanie Weiland - B.Sc. thesis

Selected Publications

Jürgen Steimle, Oliver Brdiczka, Max Mühlhäuser: “CoScribe: Integrating Paper and Digital Documents for Collaborative Knowledge Work”, IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 2(3), pp. 174-188, IEEE Press, 2009.

Jochen Huber, Jürgen Steimle, Max Mühlhäuser: "Toward More Efficient User Interfaces for Mobile Video Browsing: An In-Depth Exploration of the Design Space", Proceedings of ACM Multimedia, pp. 341-350, ACM Press, 2010.

Mohammadreza Khalilbeigi, Roman Lissermann, Max Mühlhäuser, Jürgen Steimle: "Xpaaand: Interaction Techniques for Rollable Displays", Proceedings of CHI 2011, pp. 2729-2732, ACM Press, 2011.

Jürgen Steimle, Mohammadreza Khalilbeigi, Max Mühlhäuser, James D. Hollan: "Physical and Digital Media Usage Patterns on Interactive Tabletop Surfaces", Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2010 (ITS 2010), pp. 167-176, ACM Press, 2010.

Full list of our publications is available in our publication database.