DTFlash: Rapid Prototyping for Multi-User Multi-Touch Applications
DTFlash (DiamondTouch-Flash) is a project to develop next-generation rapid prototyping support that leverages an authoring environment rather than a more general-purpose programming environment. DTFlash will advance research into hardware and software to support multiple users interacting simultaneously with two hands on the same surface, and is designed to flush out multi-user interaction aspects more quickly and expose new areas of focus.
Background & Objective: Our research into multi-user/multi-touch tabletop application development (DiamondTouch Applications) revealed significant shortcomings of traditional tools and development environments when developing for advanced input devices. The DiamondTouch SDK provides a low-level C API for accessing data about which touchers are touching a surface at which places. Early research into building on top of this SDK focused on providing an API based on a general purpose programming environment such as Java or .NET. DTFlash takes a different direction by leveraging the Macromedia Flash authoring environment to emphasize authoring over programming. For example, the standard Flash authoring tool can be used to create arbitrary shapes or objects which can then simply be marked as being draggable or rotatable. Literally no coding is needed, yet the new content is "multi-toucher-aware", allowing multiple people to interact with different shapes or objects at the same time.
Technical Discussion: Through our earlier work, we found that a rapid prototyping tool for multi-user/multi-touch applications requires fundamental low-level support for a variety of items: 1> simultaneous users 2> multiple points of input from each user 3> an authoring environment for creating "multi-touch aware" content 4> multimedia support 5> the ability to simulate multiple touchers and touchpoints with a mouse and keyboard 6> debug-mode overlays for visualizing toucher information. DTFlash provides these capabilities, in part by defining primitive touch events, enhanced primitive events, and methods for semantic operations.
Also of note, DTFlash applications work as regular web pages, allowing for simple deployment and ushering in a new dimension of multi-user enabled web pages which eliminate the need to take turns with the mouse. Flash is also based on vector graphics and optimized for small downloads, so DTFlash applications have a small memory footprint. But it is the reliance on weak static typing and it's "expressiveness" which make Flash particularly well-suited for exploring drastic changes without breaking existing applications, and for facilitating the creation of complex and novel visual interfaces.
Outside Collaborations: Indiana University
Contact: Alan Esenther
Publications:
Esenther, A.; Ryall, K., "Fluid DTMouse: Better Mouse Support for Touch-Based Interactions", Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI), May 2006 (AVI 2006, TR2006-001)
Technology Areas:
Off the Desktop Interaction and Display
Graphics
Modification Date: December 10, 2007
