Abstract not found

This thesis contains a set of experiments that explore the creation and impact of social traces on digital objects. I hypothesize that layering a "history-of-use" on digital objects will positively enhance their use and build an awareness of distributed audiences. In an attempt to construct a symbolic language of audience participation, this project consists of several initial and one primary experiments which explore the parameters of communicating use-based meta-data in the background and on the object itself. PatinaMap is an enhanced image-map for the World Wide Web. Through this experiment, I explore several multivariate techniques for representing use-based meta-data. PatinaMap employs active visual filters, audio filters, remote usagetracking, intra-session paths, synchronous use representation and PatinaText in its attempt to provide users with the feeling of being part of a distributed audience and allow them to benefit from social use.

The act of reminiscence is an important element of many interpersonal activities, especially for elders where the therapeutic benefits are well understood. Individuals typically use various objects as memory aids in the act of recalling, sharing, and reviewing their memories of life experiences. Through a preliminary user study with elders using a cultural probe, we identified that a common memory aid is a photo album or scrapbook in which items are collected and preserved. In this article, we present and discuss a novel interface to our MEMENTO system that can support the creation of scrapbooks that are both digital and physical in form. We then provide an overview of the user's view of MEMENTO and a brief description of its multi-agent architecture. We report on a series of exploratory user studies in which we evaluate the affect and performance of MEMENTO and its suitability in supporting memory sharing and dissemination with physical-digital scrapbooks. Taking account of the current technical limitations of MEMENTO our results show a general approval and suitability of our system as an appropriate interaction scheme for the creation of physical-digital items such as scrapbooks.

We present steps towards a conceptual framework for tangible user interfaces. We introduce the MCRpd interaction model for tangible interfaces, which relates the role of physical and digital representations, physical control, and underlying digital models. This model serves as a foundation for identifying and discussing several key characteristics of tangible user interfaces. We identify a number of systems exhibiting these characteristics, and situate these within twelve application domains. Finally, we discuss tangible interfaces in the context of related research themes, both within and outside of the human-computer interaction domain.

This thesis develops new approaches for people to physically represent and interact with aggregates of digital information. These support the concept of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs), a genre of human-computer interaction that uses spatially reconfigurable physical objects as representations and controls for digital information. The thesis supports the manipulation of information aggregates through systems of physical tokens and constraints. In these interfaces, physical tokens act as containers and parameters for referencing digital information elements and aggregates. Physical constraints are then used to map structured compositions of tokens onto a variety of computational interpretations. This approach is supported through the design and implementation of several systems. The mediaBlocks system enables people to use physical blocks to “copy and paste ” digital media between specialized