workshop on haptic and audio interaction design

University of Glasgow, 31st August - 1st September 2006

HAID 2007

HAID 2007 is being organised by Ian Oakley and Stephen Brewster in Seoul, Korea during November 2007. All of the details, including submission dates can be found at the HAID 2007 webpage.

The workshop has now ended. Thanks to everyone who attended and presented. The proceedings are now available online from the Springer Website and the second volume containing all of the poster abstracts can be downloaded from here . You can also see some pictures from the workshop here

Overview

Technologies to enable multimodal interaction have matured to a level that we can now think about design issues rather than just technology development or proofs of concept. Haptic (tactile and force-feedback), auditory (speech and non-speech) and multimodal interfaces provide novel methods for users to interact with computer systems. Such interactions can provide benefits for all users, with particular advantages for visually impaired people and mobile device users who might have limited access to standard visual displays. However, how can we design effective haptic, audio and multimodal interfaces? In what new application areas can we apply these techniques? Are there design methods that are useful? Which evaluation techniques are particularly successful?

Little work has investigated how the haptic and auditory modalities can be efficiently and effectively combined. Is there information which is better communicated using one modality than another? How can we link haptic and auditory displays so that changes in one modality are reflected in the other? Additionally, how should we interact with these new displays and interfaces. Is a direct manipulation interaction style still appropriate? Such a technique with a force feedback device is efficient, but may not be appropriate for all types of displays. How should we interact with a tactile display, or manipulate a sonified graph?

Whilst systems which use audio or haptic interaction have been shown to be useful, neither has the bandwidth of the visual modality, which causes many problems in situations where visual displays are not available. Because of this, a sensible approach is to combine both haptic and auditory interaction to increase communication bandwidth and create multimodal interfaces. The question is how to do this in a way that combines the advantages of both senses, rather than overloading the user.

This workshop is part of the MultiVis project, which is investigating non-visual visualisation. The aim of the workshop will be to concentrate on interaction in haptic, audio and multimodal displays, bringing together interested researchers to try to answer some of these questions and to move the field forward.

Keynote Presentations

We are please to announce the following keynote presentations during the workshop

Image of Hong Tan

Hong Tan, Associate Professor, Haptic Interface Research Laboratory, Purdue University

Haptic Displays for Wearable Applications: History, Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

For a long time, the sense of touch has been regarded as the inferior sense as compared to vision or audition. However, the potential to receive information tactually is well illustrated by some natural communication methods used by individuals with severe auditory and/or visual impairments. With the advent of cellphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), there is renewed interest in transmitting information tactually for privacy or enhanced interaction experience. I will begin this talk with a historic review of tactual displays for sensory substitutions with an emphasis on wearable/portable systems. Although much work has been conducted in cataloging our ability to detect and discrimination vibrotactile signals, there has been little work on the higher level limitations associated with tactual perception. To fill this void, we have recently conducted a series of studies on tactual numerosity judgment and change detection that highlight some of the challenges associated with the development of effective wearable tactual displays. I will end the talk by contrasting the success of natural tactual communication methods with the limited achievement of man-made tactual systems, and point out ways that we can improve the performance of wearable haptic displays.

Biography

Hong Z. Tan received her Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, P.R. China. She earned her Master and Doctorate degrees, both in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory before joining the faculty at Purdue's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1998. Since 2002, she has held a courtesy appointment at Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering for her contribution to the Perception-Based Engineering program. She has also held a McDonnell Visiting Fellowship at Oxford University, and a Visiting Associate Professorship in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. She was a recipient of the US National Science Foundation's Early Faculty Development (CAREER) Award from 2000 to 2004. In addition to serving on numerous conference program committees, she was a co-organizer (with Blake Hannaford) of the International Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems from 2003 to 2005.

Image of Sile O'Modhrain

Sile O'Modhrain, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast

Motion and Action: Gesture and Touch

Abstract

The concept of body-mediated or embodied interaction, of the coupling of interface and actor, has become increasingly relevant within the domain of HCI. With the reduced size and cost of a wide variety of sensor technologies and the ease with which they can be wirelessly deployed, on the body, in devices we carry with us and in the environment, comes the opportunity to use a wide range of human motion as an integral part of the interaction with all sorts of applications. In this talk, I will introduce work carried out at Media Lab Europe, in conjunction with colleagues at Maynooth and here at Glasgow, that explores how such concepts of embodiment can be incorporated into interaction design for hand-held mobile devices.

Biography

Sile O'Modhrain's research focuses on human-computer interaction, especially interfaces incorporating haptic and auditory feedback. She earned her master's degree in music technology from the University of York and her PhD from Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). She has also worked as a sound engineer and producer for BBC Network Radio. In 1994, she received a Fulbright scholarship, and went to Stanford to develop a prototype haptic interface augmenting graphical user interfaces for blind computer users. Before taking up her position at SARC, Sile directed the Palpable Machine's group at Media Lab Europe , where her work focused on new interfaces for hand-held devices that tightly couple gestural input and touch or haptic display.

Workshop Programme

The workshop programme is available in the second volume of the proceedings which also contains all of the poster abstracts. You can download it here . The full papers listed below were published by Springer and can be found at the Springer Website

Themes

Contributions are welcomed in (but not limited to) the following areas:

Contact

David McGookin and Stephen Brewster
University of Glasgow
17 Lilybank Gardens
Glasgow
G12 8QQ

tel: +44 (0)141 330 8430
fax: +44 (0)141 330 4913
email: mcgookdk@dcs.gla.ac.uk

 

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Program Committee

Committee MemberAffiliation
Matti Grohn CSC - Scientific Computing
Margaret McLaughlin University of Southern California
Tony Stockman QMU
Patrice L. (Tamar) Weiss University of Haifa
Federico Barbagli
Roberta Klatzky Carnegie Mellon
Chris Raymaekers Hasselt University
Don Stredney OSC
Jing Hua Wayne State University
Nick Avis University of Cardiff
Nigel John University of Bangor
Steven Hsiao John Hopkins University, MD
Abdulmotaleb El Saddik U. of Ottawa, Canada
Andy Hunt University of York
Antonio Frisoli PERCRO Laboratory, Scoula Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy
Antti Pirhonen JYU
Bruce Walker Georgia Tech
Charlotte Magnusson CIRTEC, Lund, Sweden
David Prytherch University of Central England
Farshid Amirabdollahian University of Newcastle
Fredrik Winberg KTH
Graeme Coleman Dundee University
Graham McAllister Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast
Gunnar Jansson Uppsala University, Sweden
Hong Z. Tan Purdue University
Jonathan Roberts University of Kent
Mark Wright University of Edinburgh
Matthias Harders ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Mikael Fernstrom Limerick
Paul Vickers Northumbria University
Robert Stevens Manchester
Roope Raisamo Tampere University, Finland
Seungmoon Choi Pohang University of Science and Engineering
Sile O'Modhrain Queen's University Belfast
Stephen Barrass Canberra University
Stephen Furner BT
Wai Yu Queen's University, Belfast