Paper Reading #1: Conté: multimodal input inspired by an artist's crayon

Paper Reading #1: Conté: multimodal input inspired by an artist's crayon

Intro:

• Title: Conté: multimodal input inspired by an artist's crayon
• Reference Information:
  - ACM Classification: H.5.2 Information Interfaces and Presentation: Input; Interaction styles

         - LIFL & INRIA Lille
       The Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale de Lille (LIFL), is a computer science research laboratory of Lille University of Science and Technology (USTL), in Lille, France. LIFL was founded in 1983 and currently employs more than 200 employees.

Most of the projects and teams at LIFL are supported and funded by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control(INRIA). (Wikipedia)

      - Team Mint of INRIA

Daniel Vogel

• Authors Bios: Daniel Vogel and Géry Casiez 

Daniel Vogel attended the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He has done a fair a mount of work in HCI, with 15 publications from 2004-2012. He is also an artist and animator with some fairly interesting work, as can be seen on his website (http://www.nonsequitoria.com).

Géry Casiez

Géry Casiez is an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Lille, France. His research interest is in Human-Computer Interaction. His research topics are the development of interaction techniques and interaction devices (with and without haptic feedback) for 2D and 3D desktop environments. He works also on the empirical evaluation of user interfaces including associated metrics and predictive models of human performance. He has 21 publications from 2005-2012.

They both worked together doing research in the INRIA team Mint, which focuses on gestural interaction.

Summary: Conté is a small input device inspired by the way artists use a conté crayon. By changing which part of the conté is touching the surface (i.e. corner, end, edge, side), a different mode of writing/drawing can be used. For example, the corner would be used to write more precisely with pen-like ability, while the end of the conté could be used as a stamp tool. With all of these edges and corners, this makes it possible to have up to 26 different modes with just the conté. There is also the ability to have multi touch functionality when using the non-dominant hand, which opens up an avenue for even more functionality. The prototype built used common materials with less advanced technology so that it could be made by others and also be adaptable to current surfaces (i.e. Microsoft Surface) without having to adjust the surface. This somewhat limited the functionality of the conté prototype, but still had plenty of functionality. The conté used IR to determine which contact the user was pressing against the surface, which made it only possible to detect what was touching (corner, edge, etc.) and not which one was touching. This gave 7 different modes for the prototype.

This made it possible to write like a pen, highlight, stamp, copy, paste, cut, draw with shape recognition, write with words to text, display a palette, display guidelines, and even use the conte like a mouse. 

Related work not referenced in the paper: 

1. - Multimodal multiplayer tabletop gaming - Edward Tse, Saul Greenberg
2. - Enabling interaction with single user applications through speech and gestures on a multi-user tabletop - Saul Greenberg, Chia Shen, Edward Tse, Clifton Forlines
3. - Pen + Touch = New Tools - Ken Hinckley, Koji Yatani, Michel Pahud, Nicole Coddington, Jenny Rodenhouse, Andy Wilson, Hrvoje Benko, and Bill Buxton 
4. - FLUX – A Tilting Multi-Touch and Pen Based Surface - Jacob Leitner, James Powell, Thomas Seifried, Michael Haller, Bernard Doray
5. - Hand Distinction for Multi-Touch Tabletop Interaction - Chi Tai Dang, Martin Straub, Elisabeth Andre
6. - Disoriented pen-gestures for identifying users around the tabletop without cameras and motion sensors - K.A. Mohamed, S. Haag, J. Peltason
7. - Gesture-Based Interactions on Multiple Large Displays with a Tabletop Interface - Jangho Lee, Jun Lee, HyungSeok Kim and Jee-In Kim
8. - Direct Display Interaction via Simultaneous Pen + Multi-touch Input - Ken Hinckley, Michel Pahud, and Bill Buxton
9. - SideSight: multi-"touch" interaction around small devices - Alex Butler, Shahram Izadi, Steve Hodges

10. Informing the Design of Direct-Touch Tabletops - Ryall, K. ;  Forlines, C. ;  Esenther, A. ;  Vernier, F.D. ;  Everitt, K. ;  Wu, M. ;  Wigdor, D. ;  Morris, M.R. ;  Hancock, M. ;  Tse, E. 

(Edited 9/3/12 6pm) Overall, the authors did a great job of referencing other material. All throughout their article they pointed out similarities to other devices. Two main devices they seemed to compare to frequently were Deskterity and ToolStone. Deskterity focuses on using both pen and touch and deciding when the user wants to use each. This is important in conte because if the user is using the conte and their writing wrist rubs against the surface, you do not want that touch to be picked up. Also, using the pen as a different input when using multitouch is a big part of both Deskterity and Conte. Conte also uses ToolStone's idea of a cube that triggers input based on its orientation. Conte can be seen as an improvement on both of these devices because it almost seems to merge the two together. Conte is like a ToolStone that you use in your dominant hand instead of the off-hand. It uses what would appear to be a dominant-hand version of ToolStone with Pen+Touch abilities of Deskterity to form a very capable Conte. This conte device is unique, in the sense of how it is done, but it is more of an improvement and combination of many other devices previously made, so I would not say it is novel, but an improvement on novel ideas.

Evaluation: (Edited 9/3/12 6pm)

in order to evaluate the work, the authors used tests to make sure their device was indeed helpful. They measured the time it took to switch between modes and compared these results to other input devices (quantitative, objective). They also asked conte crayon artists to test their device and get feedback. These artist gave their opinions and and remarks on the comfort and ease of use of the prototype conte (qualitative, subjective). They gave their opinion on how fast it was to switch between modes (quantitative, subjective) and this gave an overall good evaluation of the prototype. The evaluation of the system was quite whole and was able to describe quite significantly all the measures necessary to describe the prototype.

Discussion:

My personal opinion on the conte is that it has a lot of promise. It solves a lot of problems that other devices are not able to. I do not think that the full 26 modes would be feasible for a user to actually remember and use, but I do believe that the methods in the prototype were done quite well, albeit only 7. The authors' evaluation of their project is quite fair, and they address all phases except for a user evaluation, which as they point out, would be premature in this case. Overall I think it is a very creative and usable device, but I do feel that it might be for more of a niche audience, as mainstream might not feel it necessary to adapt to so much functionality.