Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ONE (Unified Principles of Interaction)
Teaser
Most of today’s computer interfaces are based on principles and conceptual models created in the late seventies. They are designed for a single user interacting with a closed application on a single device with a predefined set of tools to manipulate a single type of...
Summary
Most of today’s computer interfaces are based on principles and conceptual models created in the late seventies. They are designed for a single user interacting with a closed application on a single device with a predefined set of tools to manipulate a single type of content. But one is not enough! We need flexible and extensible environments where multiple users can truly share content and manipulate it simultaneously, where applications can be distributed across multiple devices, where content and tools can migrate from one device to the next, and where users can freely choose, combine and even create tools to make their own digital workbench.
The goal of ONE is to fundamentally re-think the basic principles and conceptual model of interactive systems to empower users by letting them appropriate their digital environment. The project will address this challenge through three interleaved strands: empirical studies to better understand interaction in both the physical and digital worlds, theoretical work to create a conceptual model of interaction and interactive systems, and prototype development to test these principles and concepts in the lab and in the field. Drawing inspiration from physics, biology and psychology, the conceptual model will combine substrates to manage digital information at various levels of abstraction and representation, instruments to manipulate substrates, and environments to organize substrates and instruments into digital workspaces.
By identifying first principles of interaction, ONE will unify a wide variety of interaction styles and create more open and flexible interactive environments.
Work performed
On the empirical side, we have published a study of the use of digital tools by graphic designers, and are pursuing a study of the collaboration between designers and developers of interactive software (under submission). On the theoretical strand, we have published, in collaboration with researchers from Telecom, work on a deeper understanding of interaction based on the concepts of information theory, including an ACM Best of CHI paper award and a Best Thesis Work award from Université Paris-Saclay. We have also started in-depth studies based on the concepts of information substrates and interactions as first-class objects (under submission) and presented it in several workshops. Finally, we have published work on telepresence solutions to support collaborative work across large wall-sized displays.
The PI has presented the project in a number of invited seminars (Wellesley College, Univ. British Columbia, Univ. Aarhus, Univ. California San Diego, ETH Zurich, Univ. Zurich) and as a keynote address to the 12th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter. The PI has also co-organized a workshop on “Rethinking Interaction†at the flagship CHI 2018 conference.
Final results
Our first results go beyond the state of the art in three areas that contribute to the overall project: We better understand the needs of some expert users through our empirical studies of graphic designers and designer-developer collaboration, we demonstrated the value of using concepts from information theory to create interfaces that take better advantage of human and computer capabilities, and we developed an original solution to support telepresence across interactive rooms, thereby supporting remote collaborative environments.
By the end of the project we expect to have demonstrated a new breed of interactive environments that integrate various forms of interaction and are more attuned to human skills and capabilities. We expect to create prototypes demonstrating flexible and extensible environments that support multiple users and multiple devices while challenging the information silos that current application and cloud services impose on users. The key will be to identify a small number of unifying principles within a single conceptual model to create a \'physics of digital information\' that users can understand and appropriate.
Website & more info
More info: http://erc.one.