Research in Mobile User Interfaces at Columbia University

Steve Feiner, Columbia University, USA

27/06/2008 - 14:00h / Sala de Seminários do Departamento de Informática

Host: Media Processing Visualization and Interaction

Abstract: Where are mobile user interfaces heading, other than the relentless march toward ever smaller and faster PDAs and phones? This talk will provide an overview of some of the research directions being explored by Columbia's Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab, ranging beyond the desktop writ small.

One direction addresses wrist-worn interaction devices and displays, with an emphasis on cursorless user interfaces. Here, the goal is to eliminate the need for the mobile user to control and visually monitor a cursor while they interact with the rich world around them. In other work, we are collaborating with colleagues at the University of Maryland, the Smithsonian Institution, and Columbia to develop electronic field guides for botanists, using hand-held and head-worn displays. Our prototype user interfaces allow a botanist to photograph leaves in the field, invoke automated vision-based recognition algorithms on the images, and support the botanist in examining ranked sets of possible matches to assist in species identification.

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Steven Feiner is a Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, where he directs the Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Laboratory. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University. Prof. Feiner's research interests include virtual environments and augmented reality, knowledge-based design of graphics and multimedia, wearable and mobile computing, information visualization, and hypermedia. He is coauthor of Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice and Introduction to Computer Graphics,, and is general co-chair for the upcoming 2008 ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology.