UNIVERSITY of CALGARY Two-Sided Transparent
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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Two-Sided Transparent Display as a Collaborative Medium by Jiannan Li A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMPUTER SCIENCE CALGARY, ALBERTA JANUARY, 2015 © Jiannan Li 2015 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES The undersigned certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled “Two-Sided Transparent Display as a Collaborative Medium” submitted by Jiannan Li in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science. Supervisor, Ehud Sharlin Department of Computer Science Co-Supervisor, Saul Greenberg Department of Computer Science Examiner, Sonny Chan Department of Computer Science External Examiner, Joshua Taron Faculty of Environmental Design Date Abstract Transparent displays are ‘see-through’ screens: a person can simultaneously view both the graphics on the screen and real-world content visible through the screen. Interactive transparent displays can serve as an important medium supporting face-to-face collaboration, where people interact with both sides of the display and work together. Such displays enhance workspace awareness, which smooths collaboration: when a person is working on one side of a transparent display, the person on the other side can see the other’s hand gestures, gaze, and what s/he is currently manipulating on the shared screen. Even so, we argue that in order to provide effective support for collaboration, designing such transparent displays must go beyond current offerings. We propose using two-sided transparent displays, which can present different content on both sides. The displays should also accept interactive input on both sides and visually augment users’ actions when display transparency is reduced. We operationalized these design requirements with our two-sided transparent display prototype, FACINGBOARD-II, and devised a palette of supportive interaction techniques. Through empirical studies, we found that the workspace awareness provided by transparent displays is compromised with degrading display transparency, and that visually enhancing user actions can compensate for this awareness loss. i Publications Materials, ideas, and figures from this thesis have appeared previously in the following publications: Li, J., Greenberg, S., Sharlin, E., and Jorge, J. (2014) Interactive Two-Sided Transparent Displays: Designing for Collaboration. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (ACM DIS '14), 395-404. Li, J., Greenberg, S. and Sharlin, E. (2014) Enhancing Workspace Awareness on Collaborative Transparent Displays. Research report 2014-1065-16, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, October. Li, J., Sharlin, E., Greenberg, S., and Rounding, M. (2013) Designing the Car iWindow: Exploring Interaction through Vehicle Side Windows. In CHI ’13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’13), 1665-1670. (In Appendix B) ii Acknowledgments This thesis would not be possible without the help from many individuals. To my supervisors, Dr. Ehud Sharlin and Dr. Saul Greenberg: thank you for leading me into the exciting realm of human-computer interaction, for your invaluable mentorship, insights, and support in and beyond research. It was the most fulfilling two years in my life so far working with you. Ehud, thank you for always encouraging and supporting me to go forward when I lost confidence or hesitated. Saul, thank you for showing me the true spirit of professionalism and perfectionism. To all iLabbers: thank you for making Interactions Lab such a friendly, interesting, and creative place. I will remember our lunch table chats, games nights, pizzas on the old tabletop display, and helpful hands from everyone. I am proud that I started to learn the iLab style of presenting research, where the way of telling the story is as important as the story itself; and where aesthetics is as important as algorithms. To my master buddies, Setareh, David (& Lindsay), and Bon: together we have had much fun and faced many challenges. I wish you all the best in your journey onwards. To Xing-Dong: thank you for your help and your insights on life as a young researcher. I enjoyed the chats we had in your ‘hacker space’. To Dr. Anthony Tang: thank you for your encouragement. I still remember the moment that I was in the media room, and you said to me, “You should speak more. Your opinions have their unique value.” To Dr. Sheelagh Carpendale: thank you for showing me the beauty of information visualization and your generous help when I really needed it. To my committee members, Prof. Sonny Chan and Prof. Joshua Taron: thank you for being on my committee and your insightful advice. To my parents, Shuying and He: thank you for ever being my source of energy to wonder, to learn, and to explore. iii Dedication To my parents, Shuying and He. iv Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................... i Publications .............................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................... iii Dedication ................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... v List of Figures .......................................................................................................... x List of Tables ......................................................................................................... xiii Chapter 1. Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background ................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Motivation: Why Collaboration on Transparent Displays? ....................... 3 1.3 Thesis Objective ......................................................................................... 5 1.4 Methodology .............................................................................................. 7 1.5 Contributions .............................................................................................. 8 1.6 Frame of Reference .................................................................................... 9 1.7 Thesis Overview ......................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2. Related Work ...................................................................................... 11 2.1 Transparent Display Technology ............................................................. 11 Emissive Transparent Displays ............................................................ 12 Projection-based Transparent Displays ................................................ 13 2.2 Workspace Awareness ............................................................................. 16 Workspace Awareness in Collaboration .............................................. 16 Gathering Workspace Awareness Information .................................... 18 Workspace Awareness and Collaborative Transparent Displays ........ 19 2.3 Territoriality in Shared Workspaces ......................................................... 20 v 2.4 Supporting Remote Collaboration using Transparent Display Metaphors …………………………………………………………………………...21 2.5 Supporting Collocated Collaboration Using Transparent Displays ......... 24 2.6 Summary .................................................................................................. 26 Chapter 3. Designing Collaborative Transparent Display Interfaces .............. 28 3.1 Early Exploration: FACINGBOARD-I ......................................................... 28 Implementation of FACINGBOARD-I .................................................... 28 Creating and Playing with FACINGBOARD-I ........................................ 30 Informal Evaluation and Discussion .................................................... 32 3.2 Design Rationale for Collaborative Transparent Displays ....................... 33 Two-Sided Interactive Input ................................................................ 34 Different Content on Both Sides .......................................................... 35 Augmenting Human Actions ............................................................... 38 3.3 The Implementation of FACINGBOARD-II: a Two-Sided Transparent Display …………………………………………………………………………...39 Projector and Display Wall Setup ........................................................ 40 Projection Fabric .................................................................................. 41 Input ..................................................................................................... 43 Limitations and Practicalities ............................................................... 44 3.4 Designing FACINGBOARD-II Relaxed WYSIWIS .................................... 45 3.5 Summary .................................................................................................. 50 Chapter 4. Transparency vs. Awareness Enhancement Techniques ................ 51 4.1 Independent Variables