Authors:
Thomas Augsten Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
Konstantin Kaefer Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
René Meusel Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
Caroline Fetzer Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
Dorian Kanitz Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
Thomas Stoff Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
Torsten Becker Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
Christian Holz Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
Patrick Baudisch Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany
Published In:
UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
Summary
The authors of this paper have set out to, in their words, "explore the design decisions," of large high-resolution input devices. Specifically, they explore a system that uses pressure sensing devices to detect minute foot presses on a floor. The system they used is called FTIR. It is able, through the use of a series of pressure sensing devices, to detect any number of pressure points in the system. A big concern of the paper is whether the authors can eliminate unwanted inputs. Since the input system is the floor itself, the users have to stand on it and walk across it to do anything. They are concerned with eliminating these unwanted foot presses and focus only on deliberate foot presses. In order to determine the best method of disregarding unwanted foot presses and highlight intended foot presses, the group created a focus group based on thirty volunteers. The authors created two simulation buttons on the ground and asked the users to show how they would activate one while ignoring the other. After monitoring how they behaved, the authors verbally interviewed the volunteers in order to understand how and why they acted. Through this study, the authors concluded the best method was to make the users tap, double tap, jump, or stomp on a button to cause its activation. Another few studies were performed, each with a different task in mind, examples include: which part of the foot should cause activation, and which point should be considered the "hotspot" or the primary method of activating buttons.
Hypothesis:
There isn't so much as a hypothesis, as there is a question of usability. Is it possible to create a large multi-input floor that can detect such small differences in foot presses that it could tell users apart by the differences of their shoe's soles. Also the question of whether it is feasible to create a system that users can walk on and activate controls comfortably. Ultimately the authors collected enough data from user study groups to form the beginnings of ideas for user input. They have not yet constructed the actual room with the floor based input device, but they have a prototype and detailed construction plans.
Discussion
As always with these discussion, I must be careful to comment on the technical merit of the paper and not just focus on the feasibility/usefulness of the ideas presented. So I will only mention this once: I really don't see the point of this. It has to be implemented into the construction of the room, so home use it out of the window. In commercial use, an actual keyboard will probably be better 95% of the time, I can only see this delegated to cheap, gimmicky games or other advertising ploys. Also as a side note, I have played a LOT of DDR. I mean a lot, and I never, ever liked using the pad to navigate through the menus. Many times my friends or I would just pick up the controller or use the keyboard to make selections and leave the dance pad for the actual game. Even then, playing in arcades was much different than playing at home because the pad the arcade was always worn down from too many users putting too much pressure on them, which is a problem I see for this device.
That aside, I think this technology is pretty interesting. The ability to differentiate users based on their shoe is very intriguing. Typing with your feet seems pretty frustrating through, aside from the length of time it would take, the motions sound like it would wear on you. I think they were spot on with the methods of telling input between just walking, though if I were them, I would not force users to jump to do a simple task like bring up a context menu. This seems ill-suited to older users or less athletic users.
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