February 2013: Intro to Augmented Reality with Daniel Iaboni

The last few years have seen augmented reality finally breaking into the mainstream. Designers have an exciting opportunity to create augmented reality interfaces. To do so, they need to consider not only the context of use, but also the environment in which the information is presented.

Daniel Iaboni is dedicated to creating and improving designs to provide an exceptional interaction among users, their environment and their tools. To do so, he draws upon extensive knowledge from the fields of engineering, computer science, psychology and anthropology. In this session he’ll walk us through important concepts in designing for augmented reality, including input and display technologies, current interaction techniques, and approaches to prototyping.

Daniel is currently Lead User Experience Specialist at Akendi, where he works on projects for a variety of clients.

Thursday February 21, 2013
5:30 to 7:00 pm
FELT Lab at Quarry Integrated Communications
1440 King Street North, St. Jacobs, Ontario
[Map]
Sign up now, as space is limited!

November Recap- Thinkering at the FELT Lab

On Thursday, uxWaterloo had the privilege of being one of the first groups to tour the new FELT lab.  We got a chance to practice “thinkering,” which happens when you tinker with technologies and think about how they can be applied to your daily life.

Our evening began with an introduction from students from the University of Waterloo’s Research Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP).  Our challenge was to get together in groups, and brainstorm ways that we could combine the various technologies in the lab with a tool called Apptui. 

Please click on the photo below to see a photo slideshow and the various technologies that we were able to play with.  Thanks to REAP,  Quarry Integrated Communications, and everyone who attended for such a fun and collaborative event!

(November 2011) An Evening of Serious Play at the New FELT Lab

Our November event is an exciting opportunity to get some hands-on play time with a variety of interactive technologies in the recently launched FELT lab, located in St. Jacobs. uxWaterloo is one of the very first groups to make use of this terrific new facility!

A digital sandbox for serious play

Founded by the University of Waterloo’s Research Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP), the FELT lab is designed to spark “research entrepreneurship” between UW students, faculty and industry experts. It focuses particularly on interactivity and responsiveness in digital display environments, and has numerous corporate partners who’ve brought some terrific toys to the table.

The lab is located in the offices of Quarry Integrated Communications, but has a separate entrance off King Street in St. Jacobs. Inside the lab, you’ll find a range of emerging technologies such as Christie Canada’s MicroTiles, GestureTek’s Cube and Kiosk, Float4’s interactive FX, and Kommerz’s Mixed Reality Interface (MRI).

And we’re going to have some serious fun!

uxWaterloo’s event will feature some hands-on creative, integrative thinking, and building. Guided by students from the REAP program, we’ll work in groups to brainstorm (and bodystorm!) unique combinations and innovative applications of the lab’s technologies. We’ll pitch our best ideas to each other while learning about all the lab’s capabilities and technologies in the process. And, we’ll be documenting the process and ideas on video, ensuring that our creative energy is captured for posterity.

Play! Create! Share! Learn! It’s going to be an awesome event!

Thursday November 24, 2011
5:30 to 7:00 pm
FELT Lab at Quarry Integrated Communications
1440 King Street North, St. Jacobs, Ontario
[Map]
Sign up now, as space is limited!

(March 2010) Next Generation Tabletop Interfaces

Thursday, March 18, 2010
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Accelerator Centre
Meeting Room #2
295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo
[Map]

“One day, your computer will be a big-ass table.”

As the above parody so hilariously illustrates, we have yet see tabletop interfaces in every home. We’re at least a few years away from finding them in Best Buy or Future Shop. However, specialized markets for these devices are indeed emerging — and new applications are on the horizon. This month, Stacey Scott will overview some of the digital tabletop research being conducted in the Collaborative Systems Laboratory at the University of Waterloo. She’ll focus on two specific application areas: military command and control operations, and digital board gaming.

Even before Microsoft announced the Surface system in 2007, the Human-Computer Interaction community was actively researching digital tabletop technologies since Pierre Wellner proposed the DigitalDesk in 1991. Yet only recently have hardware and software advances begun to make digital tabletops a feasible technology for real-world markets. Innovations in operating systems (e.g., Microsoft 7), development environments (e.g., Windows Presentation Foundation), and input technologies (e.g., FTIR and TouchCo “multitouch” technologies) are enabling a move beyond proof-of-concept tabletop systems. We’re also well beyond simple demonstrations of new interface metaphors and interaction techniques for manipulating and sharing digital photos.

RSVPs requested

If you’re hoping to attend, please help us anticipate numbers by registering here RSVP’ing to Wanda Eby at Communitech. Thanks!

About the speaker

Stacey Scott is an Assistant Professor of Human Systems Engineering in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Scott received her Ph.D. in Computer Science (specializing in Human-Computer Interaction and Computer-Supported Collaboration) from the University of Calgary in 2005. She received her B.Sc. in Computing Science and Mathematics from Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS) in 1997. She completed two years of postdoctoral studies in the Humans and Automation Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA, USA) from 2005-2007, where she developed awareness technologies to facilitate collaborative decision-making in time-critical military command and control operations.

Dr. Scott’s graduate research focused on understanding collaborative tabletop work practices with traditional media and developing interface design requirements for digital tabletop platforms. She is now combining this previous theoretical and high-level requirements work with the applied research experience gained in her postdoc to pursue the development of digital tabletop systems that support real-world collaboration in complex task domains. In general, her research interests include computer-supported collaboration, large-screen displays, interface and interaction design, and information visualization.