skip to main content
10.1145/2380116.2380178acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesuistConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

FlowBlocks: a multi-touch ui for crowd interaction

Published: 07 October 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Multi-touch technology lends itself to collaborative crowd interaction (CI). However, common tap-operated widgets are impractical for CI, since they are susceptible to accidental touches and interference from other users. We present a novel multi-touch interface called FlowBlocks in which every UI action is invoked through a small sequence of user actions: dragging parametric UI-Blocks, and dropping them over operational UI-Docks. The FlowBlocks approach is advantageous for CI because it a) makes accidental touches inconsequential; and b) introduces design parameters for mutual awareness, concurrent input, and conflict management. FlowBlocks was successfully used on the floor of a busy natural history museum. We present the complete design space and describe a year-long iterative design and evaluation process which employed the Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation (RITE) method in a museum setting.

Supplementary Material

JPG File (paper_0305-file3.jpg)
suppl.mov (paper_0305-file3.wmv)
Supplemental video

References

[1]
Microsoft Surface. http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
[2]
http://www.tolweb.org
[3]
http://www.ideum.com/interactive-exhibits/
[4]
Antle A. Futura: design for collaborative learning and game play on a multi-touch digital tabletop. TEI'11, 93--100.
[5]
Apitz, G. and Guimbretiere, F. CrossY: a crossing-based drawing application. UIST '04, 3--12.
[6]
Bau, O. and Mackay, W. E. OctoPocus: a dynamic guide for learning gesture-based command sets. UIST '08, 37--46.
[7]
Belatar, M. and Coldefy, F. Sketched menus and iconic gestures, techniques designed in the context of shareable interfaces. ITS '10, 143--146.
[8]
Bragdon, A., Uguray, A., Wigdor, D., Anagnostopoulos, S., Zeleznik, R. and Feman, R. Gesture play: motivating online gesture learning with fun, positive reinforcement and physical metaphors. ITS '10, 39--48.
[9]
Buxton, W. A three-state model of graphical input. INTERACT '90, 449--456.
[10]
Cohen, J., Withgott, M. and Piernot, P. Logjam: a tangible multi-person interface for video logging. In Proc. CHI '99, 128--135.
[11]
Freeman, D., Benko, H., Morris, M. R. and Wigdor, D. ShadowGuides: visualizations for in-situ learning of multi-touch and whole-hand gestures. ITS '09, 165--172.
[12]
Frisch, M., Kleinau, S., Langner, R. and Dachselt, R. Grids & guides: multi-touch layout and alignment tools. CHI '11, 1615--1618.
[13]
Gutwin, C. and Greenberg, S. A descriptive framework of workspace awareness for real-time groupware. CSCW 2002, 411--446.
[14]
Hartmann, B., Morris, M. R., Benko, H. and Wilson, A. D. Pictionaire: supporting collaborative design work by integrating physical and digital artifacts. CSCW '10, 421--424.
[15]
Hinrichs, U., Schmidt, H. and Carpendale, S. Emdialog: Bringing information visualization into the museum. IEEE ToV&CG, 14(6):1181--1188, 2008.
[16]
Hinrichs, U. and Carpendale, S. Gestures in the wild: Studying multi-touch gesture sequences on interactive tabletop exhibits. CHI 2011, 3023--3032.
[17]
Hornecker, E. I don't understand it either, but it is cool - visitor interactions with a multi-touch table in a museum. TABLETOP 2008, 113--120.
[18]
Hornecker, E. Interactions around a contextually embedded system. TEI '10, 169--176.
[19]
Jacucci, G., A. Morrison, Richard, G., Kleimola, J., Peltonen, P., Parisi, L. and Laitinen, T. Worlds of information: designing for engagement at a public multi-touch display. CHI '10, 2267--2276.
[20]
Kurtenbach, G.and Buxton, W. 1994. User learning and performance with marking menus. CHI'94, 258--264.
[21]
Lepinski, G. J., Grossman, T. and Fitzmaurice, G. The Design and Evaluation of Multitouch Marking Menus. CHI '10, 2233--2242.
[22]
Marshall, P., Fleck, R., Harris, A., Rick, J., Hornecker, E., Rogers, Y., Yuill, N. and Dalton, N.S. Fighting for control: children's embodied interactions when using physical and digital representations. In CHI '09, 2149--2152.
[23]
Marshall, P., Morris, R., Rogers, Y., Kreitmayer, S. and Davies, M. Rethinking 'multi-user': an in-the-wild study of how groups approach a walk-up-and-use tabletop interface. CHI '11, 3033--3042.
[24]
Medlock, M., Wixon, D., McGee, M. and Welsh, D. The Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation Method: Better Products in Less Time. Cost Justifying Usability, An Update for the Internet Age. Bias, R. and Mayhew, D. (eds). Boston, Morgan Kaufmann, 2005.
[25]
Morris, M. R., Ryall, K., Shen, C., Forlines, C. and Vernier, F. Beyond social protocols: Multi-user coordination policies for co-located groupware. CSCW'04 262--265.
[26]
Morris, M. R., Huang, A. Paepcke, A. and Winograd, T. Cooperative gestures: multi-user gestural interactions for co-located groupware. CHI'06 1201--1210.
[27]
Moscovich, T. Contact area interaction with sliding widgets. UIST '09, 13--22.
[28]
Olson, I. C., Leong, Z. A., Wilensky, U. and Horn, M. S. "It's just a toolbar!" Using Tangibles to Help Children Manage Conflict Around a Multi-Touch Tabletop. TEI'11, 29--36.
[29]
Peltonen, P., Kurvinen, E., Salovaara, A., Jacucci, G., Ilmonen, T., Evans, J., Oulasvirta, A., and Saarikko P. It's mine, don't touch!: interactions at a large multi-touch display in a city centre. CHI'08 1285--1294.
[30]
Schmidt, H., Hinrichs, U., Dunning, A., and Carpendale, S. memory {en} codebuilding a collective memory within a tabletop installation. Proc. CAe, Eurographics Association, 135--142, 2007.
[31]
Schmidt, D., Chong, M. K. and Gellersen, H. IdLenses: Dynamic personal areas on shared surfaces. ITS 2010, 131--134.
[32]
Shen, C., Vernier, F. D., Forlines, C., and Ringel, M. DiamondSpin: An Extensible Toolkit for Around-the-Table Interaction. CHI'04, 167--174.
[33]
Scott, S. and Raffle, H. Social immersive media: pursuing best practices for multi-user interactive camera/projector exhibits. CHI '09, 1447--1456.
[34]
Shaer, O., Leland, N., Calvillo-Gamez, E. H. and Jacob, R. J. K. The TAC Paradigm: Specifying Tangible User Interfaces. PUC, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 359--369, Sept. 2004.
[35]
Sulaiman, N. S., Oliver, P. Attribute Gates. UIST 2008, 57--66.
[36]
Ryall, K., Morris, M. R., Everitt, K., Forlines, C. and Shen, C. Experiences with and observations of direct-touch tabletops. Tabletop, 89--96.
[37]
Ullmer, B., Ishii, H., and Glas, D. mediaBlocks: physical containers, transports, and controls for online media. In Proc. SIGGRAPH '98, 379--386.
[38]
Ullmer, B., Ishii, H., Jacob, R. J. K. Token+Constraint Systems for Tangible Interaction with Digital Information. ToCHI 2005, 81--118.
[39]
Weiss, M., Wagner, J., Jansen, Y., Jennings, R., Khoshabeh, R., Hollan, J. D., and Borchers, J. SLAP widgets: bridging the gap between virtual and physical controls on tabletops. CHI '09, 481--490.
[40]
Wigdor, D. and Wixon, D. Brave NUI World | Designing Natural User Interfces for Touch and Gesture. Morgan Kaufmann, 2010.
[41]
Wilson, A., Izadi, S., Hilliges, O., Garcia-Mendoza, A., and Kirk, D. Bringing physics to the surface. UIST '08, 67--76.
[42]
Wobbrock, J., Morris, M. R. and Wilson, A. User-defined gestures for surface computing. CHI '09, 1083--1092.

Cited By

View all
  • (2020)Zooming in Time—Exploring Students’ Interpretations of a Dynamic Tree of LifeJournal of Science Education and Technology10.1007/s10956-020-09893-xOnline publication date: 26-Dec-2020
  • (2019)Effect of age on use of interactive exhibits in a museum contextProceedings of the 13th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter: Designing the next interaction10.1145/3351995.3352047(1-11)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2019
  • (2017)ReflectorProceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3126594.3126665(351-364)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2017
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. FlowBlocks: a multi-touch ui for crowd interaction

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    UIST '12: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
    October 2012
    608 pages
    ISBN:9781450315807
    DOI:10.1145/2380116
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 07 October 2012

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. crowd interaction
    2. drag & drop
    3. multi-touch ui

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    UIST '12

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 561 of 2,567 submissions, 22%

    Upcoming Conference

    UIST '25
    The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
    September 28 - October 1, 2025
    Busan , Republic of Korea

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)16
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
    Reflects downloads up to 07 Jan 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2020)Zooming in Time—Exploring Students’ Interpretations of a Dynamic Tree of LifeJournal of Science Education and Technology10.1007/s10956-020-09893-xOnline publication date: 26-Dec-2020
    • (2019)Effect of age on use of interactive exhibits in a museum contextProceedings of the 13th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter: Designing the next interaction10.1145/3351995.3352047(1-11)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2019
    • (2017)ReflectorProceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3126594.3126665(351-364)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2017
    • (2016)Who Has the Force?Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video10.1145/2932206.2932208(25-29)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2016
    • (2016)Object-Oriented DrawingProceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2858036.2858075(4610-4621)Online publication date: 7-May-2016
    • (2016)Visualizing biological data in museums: Visitor learning with an interactive tree of life exhibitJournal of Research in Science Teaching10.1002/tea.2131853:6(895-918)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2016
    • (2015)Fluid GroupingProceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2702123.2702231(867-876)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2015
    • (2014)KickablesProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2556288.2557016(3143-3152)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2014
    • (2014)A Resilient Interaction Concept for Process Management on Tabletops for Cyber-Physical SystemsProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human Interface and the Management of Information. Information and Knowledge in Applications and Services - Volume 852210.1007/978-3-319-07863-2_34(347-358)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2014
    • (2012)Touch, click, navigateProceedings of the 2012 ACM international conference on Interactive tabletops and surfaces10.1145/2396636.2396669(205-214)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2012

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media