SPEAKER: Nicolai Marquardt
AFFILIATION: Department of Computing Science, University of Calgary,

TITLE: Prototyping Proxemic Interactions in Ubiquitous Computing Ecologies

ABSTRACT:
People naturally understand and use proxemic relationships (e.g.,
their distance and orientation towards others) in everyday situations.
However, only few ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) systems interpret
such proxemic relationships to mediate interaction. This is a lost
opportunity, since we can leverage the rules of proxemics in the
design of novel ubicomp interactions.

In this talk I introduce my research of Proxemic Interactions that
considers fine-grained information of proxemics to mediate people’s
interactions with digital devices, such as large digital surfaces or
portable personal devices. With several application examples I will
illustrate the potential of proxemic interactions. I also introduce
our Proximity Toolkit that facilitates rapid prototyping of such
proxemic-aware systems by supplying developers with the orientation,
distance, motion, identity, and location information between entities.

Besides this overview of my research in proxemic interactions, I will
also illustrate the prototyping and design process behind some of
these projects. In particular, I highlight a few sketching techniques,
which will include a few examples from the upcoming book “Sketching
User Experiences: The Workbook”, co-authored with Saul Greenberg,
Sheelagh Carpendale, and Bill Buxton.


BRIEF BIO:
Nicolai Marquardt is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the
University of Calgary. In collaboration with his supervisor Dr. Saul
Greenberg he is working in the research areas of human-computer
interaction, ubiquitous computing, and interactive surfaces. His
dissertation directly focuses on proxemic interactions within ubicomp
ecologies. He is a former intern at Microsoft Research Cambridge and
received a M.Sc. degree in Media Systems from the Bauhaus-University
Weimar.