Slashdot Mirror
Peephole Displays
benh57 writes "A student at Berkeley has come up with a novel approach for navigating small handheld displays. In effect the display is a "peephole" into a much larger information area. You see different parts of the display by moving the handheld around - no more tiny scrollbars. Check out the DiVX movies to see it in action. It even works in 3D!"
Heh, I went to high school in Winnipeg with that guy. (Well, he was in grade 9 when I was in grade 12.) He was a math prodigy back then. Placed highly in all the Canadian math competitions while he was underaged by a few years.
Being that it's similar to looking through a small hole to see a large interior I think they should call it The Speculum
Trolling is a art,
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Nice concept, but I wouldn't want to use it in a bus or such. It real life it would crave some sort of gyro to detect movement. Imagine a bus rounding a corner and the text compensating by scrolling. At least it would serve as amusement to the fellow busriders.
Of course there are other solutions, and there is defenently a need for a solution to this problem. I would suggest having touch sensitive sides of the actual PDA. To scroll, simply stroke the side of the PDA (not a wheel, but the side). But there are probably even better solutions to this. I enjoy the peephole approach, but must regrettably say that the problem is to control it (without clicking tiny sliders).
Anyways, I think it would be neat to have a PDA where the little box part was just the computer (well, the screen part could also be used), and the visual interface used those 3-D glasses. Dragging the pointer around would show a mouse on the glasses. Make the interface bluetooth or 802.11 and that would be extra cool!
I seem to remember seeing something like this in a gadget-oriented genre, like a Bond film, for maps. It's a pretty cool idea, since it's not much different than using a magnifying lens.
In fact, when you think about it, this is a real-world application of a virtual device that implements a real-world tool. Check out The Movable Filter as a User Interface Tool : essentially a magnifying lens with "logical filters". Now that's been moved back into the real world again.
Who needs new ideas when there are so many good ones that haven't been used already?
Hasn't this been done before? In X, if the virtual resolution is larger than the screen resolution, you use the mouse to move around. How is this much different?
I''ve been using a similar style for years. I can't even play a game without moving the controller wildly about while playing a game.
There's no convincing me that moving the controller to the right doesn't help the car turn faster in GT3. Or that shaking it up and down while holding the X button so hard my fingers change colors doesn't help it with acceleration on the straight away.
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
VIDEOS To play DivX video, get a free decoder from divx.com. You can play DivX videos on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.
;o)
* video demonstration for CHI 2003, 16 Dec 2002 (5m 52s)
o high quality: AVI (72 Mb, DivX)
o medium quality: AVI (33 Mb, DivX)
o low quality: AVI (16 Mb, DivX)
* video figure for CHI 2003, 23 Sep 2002 (2m 35s)
o AVI (13.8 Mb)
o QuickTime (27.6 Mb)
* submitted to UIST 2002, Apr 2002 (3m 31 s)
o AVI (46 Mb, MPEG4.2)
o QuickTime (50 Mb, MJPEG)
o DivX (45 Mb)
How long will their server last?
Get your own free personal location tracker
After I get all excited doing this, where can I ... ahem ... insert myself?
Best Windows Freeware
I think this is a very innovative way to make the UI help get around the physical limitations of the device.
.02 worth...
But what we REALLY need are answers to those physical limitations. I have a lot more hope for a foldable display in the long term than in ways to try to make a big picture/UI fit on a small screen.
Not knocking what is an excellant piece of work, but sometimes a great solution to a problem blocks better solutions.
Just my
... will you see what you're typing on your projected keyboard?
I remember hearing about something with a hand held device that was gyroscope enabled that allowed you to do something similar (and this was about 2 years ago I think). If you tilt the device to the left, it scrolled to the left and so on. I don't have the URL handy, but it doesn't seem to me like this is that new of a concept.. unless I'm missing something (unfortunately the site is too slashdotted to read right now)
As it's been slashdotted already
OVERVIEW
Recent years have shown an explosion of interest in handheld computing devices (such as personal digital assistants, cellphones, and mini-notebook computers). These devices have a form factor that enhances convenience, portability, and durability, and they tend to provide desirable operational features such as instant-on, fast non-volatile storage, and simpler, more direct modes of interaction (touch screens, application-specific buttons, no need to "save" work and "quit" programs).
However, current display technology constrains the size of the display to be no larger than the physical size of the device. This sets up a tension between the desire to make the device small, light, and non-intrusive, and the desire to display a reasonable amount of information and provide efficient interaction.
Accessing a large amount of information on a small display generally requires some kind of selection or scrolling mechanism. Cellphones and PDAs, for example, have "up" and "down" buttons that are pressed repeatedly to scroll through lists of records, but using them is slow and cumbersome.
I propose a new scrolling mechanism based on the metaphor of a virtual window: the information is laid out on a virtual space much larger than the device itself. The device itself is moved around the virtual space to view a small part (a window) of the space. I hypothesize that this will have several advantages:
Scrolling becomes direct and intuitive; one can move to a new region of the space just as fast as one can move the device.
It eliminates the feedback loop of normal scrolling (press "Down", read, press "Down", read, etc.) and replaces it with a single movement.
It replaces discrete control with continuous control, massively increasing the bandwidth of information communicated between user and device.
It frees the hand used to operate the device, permitting scrolling and interaction at the same time. Scrolling moves into the background, occupying little or no cognitive load, producing the illusion that the entire
workspace is available at once.
It yields some of the advantages of two-handed interfaces for free: the non-dominant hand gives coarse positioning information, while the dominant hand does specific pointing and manipulation.
SPECIFIC GOALS
During this semester, i hope to achieve the following specific goals:
Choose a platform that is sufficiently open and fast to support this development (a Palm-based PDA will be a likely first choice if early attempts to interface to it are successful).
Explore and develop at least one method for sensing the position of the device. (Some possibilities to examine include: the use of accelerometers to obtain differential information; the use of a tether with a mechanical encoder to measure absolute position; the use of computer vision to locate a marker that's stuck to the device.)
Devise a task to be performed that requires scrolling functionality. (Possibilities include making a selection from a scrolling list, or locating an object on a large map.)
Develop a sample application that allows a user to perform this task (a) using directional scrolling buttons; (b) using conventional scrollbars; (c) using the virtual window technique (or techniques) developed in this project.
Perform user tests and compare performance and preference among these scrolling techniques.
Submit a short paper to UIST.
RELATED WORK
I've heard of other work on tilting input, but not direct-positioning input. Tilting, in my opinion, completely misses the point: tilt input is still differential rather than direct, and is therefore no better than holding down a scroll button and waiting until you've arrived. Positional input should be much better, because it just lets you put yourself where you want to be.
Joel F. Bartlett. Rock'n'Scroll Is Here to Stay. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, May/June 2000, pp. 40-45.
Jun Rekimoto. Tilting Operations for Small Screen Interfaces. User Interface Software and Technologies 1996.
I can't get a peep out of their server...
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
... the porn industry leads the way in video display technologies!
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I'll admit that it is terribly cool looking, though the concept is not entirely new. However, the practicality of it seems rather unlikely.
If you have to lug around a huge backpack of support gear, why not just carry a larger display, such as Apple's 17" laptop or a future roll-up screen. Now, I know everyone will jump on me and say that they will reduce the size of the support gear but, it is still going to be impractical.
In order to use this thing you must move around a fair bit. Imagine a subway train full of people gyrating with their PDAs. It will look like a bunch of DDR freaks on mescalin.
I think a much better solution would be to simple use a little track ball on the the bottom of the PDA to scroll around screen. but, that's not new technology at all.
Well my web server admin just said today "it can handle a slashdot, easily" - so I guess I'm going to see if he was just talking out his arse ;)
These are just the low-res ones.
peepdemo-200.avi (15.3mb)
peepfig.avi (13.4mb)
peep.avi (44.2mb)
First two should be done in about five minutes, third may take a little longer.
Rudy Rucker described a solution similiar to this in his book the Hacker and the Ants.
Users of workstations in his book would sit on a chair, using their feet the turn the chairs circular footrest, with the screen display keeping sync, giving the screen a 'viewport' type of functionality.
A fun book to read, with some cool sounding tech and funny characters IMHO.
Gaffer/duct tape a nice colour ipaq on your face an
et violá : virtual reality
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Google Cache of article link
Google Cache of Jun 2 revision of paper with missing reference added
I really am supportive of this kind of innovation, but when it comes to any device with a tiny screen, I just think it's a case of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. There's only so much information you can present, and with only so much usability, on such a small device. Until we have something really advanced, like holographic screens that are much larger than their physical device, we won't be able to escape this problem.
For those who couldn't face downloading the oodles of movies, this is the best scene:
Toward the end of the movie, he's demo-ing the prototype, standing in front of a bulletin board, and copying a *big* map onto the *small* screen of his Sony Clio. Quite impressive. But I did feel like going "Psssst. Use the built-in cam."
yes, we have no bananas
So we're going to be viewing everything on roll-up monitors that we have to shake around to find things on, all while tapping incessantly on a projection keyboard. Sounds like we're all going to be jerking around like idiots.
I think I'll wait.
Extra hardware, extra cost, extra annoyance value.
There's a practical retail solution already, see Picsel, now shipping on Sony Clie's. Every document is displayed the same way, as a draggable, freely zoomable image, done with intuitive (touch-drag, tap-touch-drag) stylus commands.
Other nice stuff: it's cross platform (PalmOS, Symbian, WinCE, Linux, easy to port to just about anything else), and ~1.5Mb in size, which includes a web browser, file viewer, and viewers for .doc, excel, pdf, rich text and text. The only annoyance value is having to toggle between free view and input modes, but a tilting device would need a toggle or press lock anyway.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
How can I come to work drunk anymore? I just perfected driving here, now I have to retrain on my PDA? Jeeze, sometimes technology is a bad thing.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Why is this different from the "rock 'n scroll" approach used in the itsy?
This reminds me somewhat of the ACME(tm) Portable Hole favoured by Wile E. Coyote; the kind where you stick it to a wall and where the hole leads you to depends where on the wall the hole is stuck to.
Now if I stick my PDA to the wall, does it mean that passing Roadrunners will be able to Meep Meep their way through the screen, and I'll just splat comically against it on my way through?
Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting concept, but execution would be difficult to use in the real world. Someone already suggested the difficulties of using it on a bus - this would certainly cause real problems. Plus the fact that it would need gyros would increase the cost.
Projecting keyboards would be the ideal solution for palmtoppers on the move, IMHO.
I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her first name was 'Always.'
And you could use GPS to detect precision.
Then you could use a very fast wireless link to connect to a collection of high resolution earth images.
So, if you held the device in front of you and looked at it, you could see exactly what you'd see if your hand was empty.
PHBs should be able to buy this "empty-hand" device for $2500.00 in two years; the rest of will get it for $99.99 at Wal-Mart in five.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
..I wanted to add some data into my PDA's spreadsheet, but my arms weren't long enough to reach ZZ-999 :-(
~
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
The only problem with scroll bars mentioned is:
Are we that worried about the screen real estate? Enough to break the user interface continuity from, say, your computer to your PDA for something as basic as scrolling? The "several advantages" of doing so seem pretty insubstantial:
If it's really just screen real estate, a trackball or little direction pad like a gameboy has makes more sense, with some sort of tiny but clear visual clue -- a border or something -- that you could scroll in one direction or another. But we're all used to scroll bars by now, we really are, and even something as simple as that would be jarring for lots of people.
Maybe there are some new ways to program for this model, to take advantage of those, uh, advantages, but for the stuff we do now it'd be clumsier.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.