PowerPoint and Shoot?

Some bright folks at the University of Toronto’s Department of Computer Science Human-Computer Interaction Group spend their time thinking about how we get along with computers and make them do our bidding (ha ha). One interesting project involves a hand-held projector and a computer pen, enabling the user to project material onto any surface within a room and, in effect, park it there, such that this document is “located” on that tabletop and that graphic is lodged on the wall to the right, etc. “Shining” the projector gun on that tabletop reveals the document and sweeping the gun to the right shows the graphic…

All of which is better explained in a video (Xiang Cao, Ravin Balakrishnan: Interacting with Dynamically Defined Information Spaces using a Handheld Projector and a Pen, PDF of article).

powerpoint_gun.png

To get a sense of the full range of interactions studied by the HCI Group, take a look at lead researcher Ravin Balakrishnan’s online list of publications, and the associated graphics.

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