DiamondSpin
 | Watch the movie (28 MB) |
DiamondSpin is an interactive, and platform independent, Java Tool Kit that allows multiple users to work on a digital tabletop simultaneously, in a truly around-the-table setting. DiamonmdSpin is a core project that has enabled a range of research investigations into large shared displays and off-the-desktop human computer interaction. Currently, MERL's own UbiTable project, and several research projects in other universities are based on DiamondSpin.
Background & Objective: Large shared interactive surfaces offer great potential for ubiquity of computationally augmented tables and walls. Their affordances to multi-person interactivity, concurrent simultaneous direct manipulability, and individual user identification prompt new ways of thinking in terms of UI design and interaction technique development. This, in turn, requires us to re-examine the conventional metaphor and underlying system infrastructure, both of which have been traditionally geared towards mice and keyboard-based, single-user desktop computers and devices. DiamondSpin toolkit is a research testbed, a sandbox and an evaluation vehicle in our pursuit of understanding large shared interactive surfaces.
Technical Discussion: One of the fundamental research issues in the design of a true tabletop UI is how to afford face-to-face or corner-to-corner multi-user collaboration. We are experimenting with the construction of a real-time Cartesian to Polar coordinate transformation system within Java to afford continuous orientation and arbitrary viewing angles of tabletop documents. DiamondSpin tool kit supports the construction of (a) arbitrary 2D geometric shapes of digital tabletops including rectangular, octagonal and circular interfaces, (b) multiple digital virtual tabletops, and (c) multiple personal and shared regions within the same display space. DiamondSpin also provides a set of tabletop UI functions, including document visualization and movement methods based on Fisheye techniques, Context Rooted Popup menus, multiple menu bars, and popup soft keyboards.
Outside Collaborations: DiamondSpin is distributed to universities with a free license agreement. Current DiamondSpin license holders span from North America to Europe and Japan. We are developing applications using DiamondSpin at MERL and with our university partners.
Contacts:
Adam Bogue
Clifton Forlines
| Technical Reports: | |
| Release, Relocate, Reorient, Resize: Fluid Techniques for Document Sharing on Multi-User Interactive Tables | |
| DiamondSpin: An Extensible Toolkit for Around-the-Table Interaction | |
Technology Area: Off the Desktop Interaction and Display
Modification Date: July 24, 2008
