BinCam is a two-part personal informatics system designed to increase individuals’ awareness of their food waste and recycling behaviour. It uses a standard kitchen bin augmented with a mobile phone to automatically capture and log an individual’s waste management activity. Photos are tagged using a crowd sourcing service and uploaded to the BinCam application on a social network site, which encourages playful engagement and reflection upon a user’s personal bin data. People can review and share communications about the bin-related behaviour of themselves and others.

BinCam is a collaborative research project between the Digital Interaction group in Culture Lab at Newcastle University, LiSC at the University of Lincoln and the University of Duisburg Essen.

For more information visit the project’s website.

Date: September 2010 – ongoing

Researcher: Anja Thieme, Rob Comber, Jack Weeden, Nick Taylor, Ashur Rafiev and Julia Miebach

Project Supervisor: Patrick Olivier

Collaborators: Prof. Nicole Krämer (University of Duisburg-Essen), Prof. Shaun Lawson (Lincoln University)

Within this project we are investigating the use of ferromagnetic sensor arrays to create novel user interface systems. We have developed a number of prototype systems and created a range of applications for use with the sensor array. We are currently exploring the use of the device for creative expression, particularly as an electronic music interface.

FerroSynth: interaction with a ferrofluid bladder.

Large ball bearing interface

Start Date: Sept 2008

Funding: Microsoft Research, Cambridge

Researchers: Jonathan Hook

Collaborators: Nicolas Villar, Alex Butler, Shahram Izadi, and Stuart Taylor from Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Press:

Microsoft’s Bag-Based Computer Interface, For Poking
Gizmodo (18/11/2009)

Bendable Magnetic Interface
MIT Technology Review (18/11/2009)

Collaborators: Nicolas Villar, Alex Butler, Shahram Izadi, and Stuart Taylor from Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Publications

2010

FerroSynth: A Ferromagnetic Music Interface (2010) Jonathan Hook, Stuart Taylor, Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2010), Australia, pdf

2009

A reconfigurable ferromagnetic input device (2009) Jonathan Hook, Stuart Taylor, Alex Butler, Nicolas Villar, Shahram Izadi, ACM Press, p. 51, New York, New York, USA: ACM Press, url

Often large amounts of computing power and storage resources are needed to facilitate e-science experiments, and much research has gone into providing software and hardware for these high-end needs. Once data sets are produced by these systems, few tools exist to comprehensively help researchers analyze, share and publish their findings and conclusions. We demonstrate a tool developed to allow the annotation, visualizing and sharing of large related data sets. Based around tangible objects, this system demonstrates a number of novel interactions for scientific research.

Publications:

2010

e-science on the surface (2010) Tom Bartindale, Jared Jackson, Patrick Olivier, ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces - ITS '10, p. 298, New York, New York, USA: ACM Press, url

This study reports on the design, implementation, and evaluation of a digital collaborative Strategic reading (DCSR) application with regard to its effectiveness for ESL (English as a Second Language) reading. DCSR applications allow users to read collaboratively on multi-touch and multi-user digital tabletop displays which support both face-to-face and computer-based interaction. The application created involves several stages of reading and comprehension. In the first stage the students are given a preview of the text. In the second and third they are encouraged to brainstorm about the subject generally and then predict what the document will contain. In the next stage they can identify unknown words from within the text, one paragraph at a time. The unknown words are then collaboratively examined by the group using various “fix up” strategies such as breaking words down into syllables, showing words in context and eventually obtaining a dictionary definition. The participants then write down “the gist” of the paragraph. Once all the paragraphs are viewed, the final stage requires the participants to look at how their final understanding of the document matches their initial brainstorming and prediction stages.

Date: Sept 2009 – Oct 2012

Project supervisor: Scott Windeatt

Researchers: Philip Heslop, Jaber Maslamani (Digital Institute)

Journeys is a resulting pieces of digital jewellery from the Intergeneration project funded by the University of York.

 The Intergeneration Project  gave us the opportunity to develop digital jewellery that focused on a particular relationship between a mother and daughter recruited through Age Concern Newcastle.  Journeys refers to a pair of digital neck pieces that are interactive and sensitive to touch. The touch of one causes the second to tremble gently. This interaction is a tactile echo that reflects their closeness and feelings for each other.

Researchers: Jayne Wallace, Peter Wright.

Collaborators: Andrew Monk (York University), Mark Blythe (Northumbria University).

This study aims to understand the nature of physical artefacts. We will specifically look at what motivates people to do family trees. We are also interested in finding out what is unique about doing research, (such as for tracing back ancestry) in places that house physical archives (rather then online resources) and weather locality means something to their research.

We are further interested in understanding what research means in an academic sense. We will be interviewing a wide range of scientific researchers, in order to understand their emotional experiences and motivation for doing research. A researcher’s way of thinking is often perceived to be linear and logical and it will be intresting to find out weather researchers ever make decisions about their research using instinct.

We hope that at the end of our study we will discover opportunities for technology and HCI.

Start Date: Oct 2010

Researchers:  Madeline Balaam, Martyn Dade-Robertson, (School of Architecture Planning and Landscape)

Collaborators:  Universities of Bristol, Brighton, Swansea, Southampton, and Greenwich.

Partnerships: Microsoft Research, Nokia Research, Victoria and Albert Museum and The British Library

see PATINA Project website

Part of the Life-Long Health and Wellbeing Project

 The aims of this pilot study are to develop a truly novel, sensitive worn monitoring device that integrates direct measures both physical activity and social interaction, to use these measures to examine daily activity and social interaction in older age individuals. The instrument will be piloted in older healthy individuals and then depressed patients and the relationship between the device output and illness features, clinical characteristics and neuropsychological performance explored. These results will be compared to those achieved using current measures of social function and activity.

See Sociometer Project website

The TouchBridge project refers to an active tangible marker system for optical based multi-touch surfaces. Interactive surfaces have proved their utility in a range of applications consequently giving rise to a Tangible User Interface (TUI) that exploit the union of physical objects with tabletop interactive surfaces. TouchBridge offers a novel, low-cost, approach for tracking objects on a camera-based multi-touch surface. It utilises modulated Infrared light to provide a bi-directional communication channel between objects and the surface and thereby presents the opportunity for much richer forms of interaction with physical objects. It is able to communicate the state of an object beyond its position and orientation.

Publications:

2010

TouchBridge: Augmenting Active Tangibles for Camera-based Multi-touch Surfaces (2010) Cassim Ladha, Karim Ladha, Jonathan Hook, Daniel Jackson, Patrick Olivier, Proceedings of ITS 7-10 November 2010, url

A multi-touch coffee table based on FTIR technology. Software on the table replicates real world properties of finger painting, allowing therapists to set up un-supervised sessions for people with dementia. The coffee table is similar to the Sage project, but includes a compliant surface and infrared camera in the unit. Software written in C#.