UltraHaptics Workshop: 23 – 25 July 2012, Pervasive Media Studio

We would like to invite you to join us for this exploratory, practical workshop, investigating how the emerging field of UltraHaptics might be used in creative context.

UltraHaptics is a multi-point haptic feedback system that allows users to experience haptic feedback simultaneously in multiple locations. This feedback is created in mid-air – so users don’t have to touch or hold any device to experience it.

The use of ultrasonic vibrations is a new technique for delivering tactile sensations to the user. In essence, a series of ultrasonic transducers emit very high frequency sound waves. When all of the sound waves meet at the same location at the same time, they create sensations on a human’s skin.

More information on UltraHaptics can be found at http://big.cs.bris.ac.uk/projects/ultrahaptics

The University of Bristol and Pervasive Media Studio are joining forces to produce a workshop designed to better understand how creative practitioners and developers can work together in creating new and novel user experiences using a unique haptic system.

Aims

1. Explore the design space and identify various application scenarios along with limitations and benefits of our system.
2. Develop and share some ideas around haptic experiences, test and rapid prototype ideas in a supported environment.
3. Investigate how designers and developers talk/ think together about designing multi-sensory experiences.

Participants
10 to 15 designers and developers working together in groups over two days. If you are interested in participating then please contact verity.alexander@watershed.co.uk or Sriram Subramanian. We will aim to provide you with all the resources needed but if you have your own laptop it would be helpful to bring it along.

Structure
Each group will have access to the haptic kit along with a couple of projectors, and cameras. Through a series of guided and open sessions the groups will design and create a haptic experience. There will be several breakout sessions where teams can work on their design. We are keen to learn more about the design process so we will be talking and videoing (without disturbing) how the groups interact with each other during the breakout sessions. The workshop will finish in a summative group session.

Organisers
Tom Carter, Sue Ann Seah, Sriram Subramanian, Clare Reddington, Verity Alexander, David Coyle & Marianna Obrist

Proposed Schedule
Monday 23^rd July

Tuesday 24^th July

Wednesday 25^th July

BIG presentations at #CHI2012

This week sees the group present a range of exciting new work as papers at the ACM CHI2012 Conference, among which are a best paper award and two best paper nominations. Here are our activities listed according to the day they will appear at the conference (with BIG lab contributors names).

May 6th

• Workshop: Interaction Design and Emotional Wellbeing (David Coyle)
  

• Workshop Paper: Emotional Response as a Measure of Liveness in New Musical Instrument Performance, Position Paper for Workshop: “Exploring HCI’s Relationship with Liveness” (Mark Marshall, Pete Bennett, Mike Fraser and Sri Subramanian)

May 7th

• Paper: Detecting Error-Related Negativity for Interaction Design (Chi Vi, Sriram Subramanian) *Best Paper Award

May 8th

• Paper: Putting Your Best Foot Forward: Investigating Real-World Mappings for Foot-based Gestures (Teng Han, Will Judd and Sri Subramanian)
  

• Paper: Engagement with Online Mental Health Interventions: An Exploratory Clinical Study of a Treatment for Depression (David Coyle)
  

• Interactivity: MUSTARD: A Multi User See Through AR Display (Abhijit Karnik, Sri Subramanian)

May 9th

• Paper: I did that! Measuring Users’ Experience of Agency in their own Actions (David Coyle) *Best Paper Nomination
  

• Paper: Augmenting Spatial Skills with Mobile Devices (Doug Boari, Mike Fraser, Kirsten Cater)
  

• Note: Ultra-Tangibles: Creating Movable Tangible Objects on Interactive Tables (Mark Marshall, Tom Carter and Sri Subramanian)

May 10th

• Paper: MUSTARD: A Multi User See Through AR Display (Abhijit Karnik, Sriram Subramanian) *Best Paper Nomination

New BIG Website Launched!

Welcome to the new look BIG website. We have worked hard to refresh the look of the site to match the exciting research projects being undertaken in the lab. Check out the new profiles in the people section or see what we are up to in the projects section.

We are also going to be much more active online with our re-vamped Twitter profile and new Facebook and Google+ profiles. Plus this news feed will feature more in-depth updates on events in the BIG lab. Check back over the next week for updates on how we get on at CHI 2012 where we have over 10 presentations!

If that isn’t enough, more new features will be rolling out across the site in the coming weeks. We hope you like our new look!

Accepted Paper at IDC 2012

Our paper about children interacting on multi-touch interactive tables in India has been accepted at the Interaction Design Children (IDC) Conference 2012. This research was done in collaboration with our partners in NIIT, Delhi, India.

This paper will be presented in June 2012 in Bremen, Germany. The authors for this paper are: Izdihar Jamil, Mark Perry, Kenton O’Hara, Abhijit Karnik, Mark T. Marshall, Swati, Sanjay and Sriram Subramanian.

Look forward to IDC 2012 in Germany!

Best paper award at CHI 2012

Chi Vi and Sriram Subramanian have won a Best Paper award at CHI 2012 for their paper “Error-Related Negativity for Interaction Design”. This paper will be presented at the conference in May 2012. More information on the project can be found here.

Chronotape presented at ACM TEI2012

Peter Bennett is presenting a paper titled “ChronoTape: Tangible Timelines For Family History” at ACM TEI2012. TEI2012 is the sixth international conference dedicated to presenting the latest results in tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction.

The Chronotape was developed as part of the PATINA project. An abstract of the paper is available here.

Mike Fraser awarded Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts

Mike has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. The RSA is an exciting organisation whose fellows are challenging the relationship between society and technology. Becoming a Fellow of the Society is a real honour and reflects our groups increasing interest in how to embed the imagination and design of novel technologies into society.

Seven Full Papers (Conditionally) Accepted to CHI 2012

Earlier this week the program chairs of the ACM CHI conference – the world’s largest and most prestigious Human-Computer Interaction research forum – notified members of our group that seven full papers have been conditionally accepted to be presented at the conference.

We are really pleased that David Coyle, our newly appointed lecturer in the group had both his papers accepted. What a great way to start at Bristol – well done David!

Congratulations also go to our PhD students and postdoctoral researchers: Abe, Chi, Doug, Mark and Tom, and our former postdoc Jason who has recently taken up a lectureship at Lancaster University. Well done everyone!