Evin Schuchardt - http://csce436spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/01/paper-reading-5-weight-shifting-mobiles.html
Stephen Morrow - http://chiblog.sjmorrow.com/2011/02/paper-reading-5-creating-salient.html
Reference Information
Title: Weight-shifting mobiles: two-dimensional gravitational displays in mobile phones
Authors: Fabian Hemmert, Susann Hamann, Matthias Löwe, Josefine Zeipelt, Gesche Joost
Presentation Venue: CHI 2010: 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems; April 10-15, 2010; Atlanta, GA, USA
Summary
This paper works to close a research gap between the idea of two-dimensional weight-shifting mobiles and their applications, including navigation and augmenting digital content through the shifting of the weight.
Similar to their other study involving shape-changing mobiles (see Paper Reading #4), the researchers do a test with twelve users to see how accurately and quickly they could determine the position of the weight within the device. After a training phase, they were asked to indicate the position of the weight by selecting it on a laptop computer. While doing the test, they could not see the device and could not touch the device while the weight was moved within the device.
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| An image taken from the paper |
After the tests, the researchers found that the users had an average error of 28.9mm for the X axis and 21.0mm for the Y axis. They also found that it took an average of 6.31 seconds to estimate the position of the weight. Based on this error, the researchers believe it would be feasible to use weight-changing as a means of informational display. The researchers also believe their results would have been better if the users had not had to put the device down in between tests. They also think the users were more accurate when identifying the Y axis position because the Y axis was longer on the device.
The researchers also compared this prototype with a shape-shifting mobile they have developed and found that the users tended to favor the shape-shifting mobile over the weight-shifting one.
Though the device is not ready for the market, the researchers point out that this may be an important area of research in human-computer interaction later on.
Discussion
Since this paper was very similar to the last (paper reading #4), it made for a quick read. A small amount of the information was the same in both the papers, but for the most part the information was new and interesting, especially after seeing a different device that utilized a different design to do similar things.
As in their other paper, I wish they could have gone into a little more detail about how they exactly plan to utilize weight-shifting in the device, but this paper focused more on proving that it would be possible to notice the weight-changes, which was still very interesting.
As noted in the paper, one area of study could be to test movement patterns and see how well users can identify them. They could also incorporate input and output into the device to demonstrate how the weight-changing could actually augment mobile devices and how the users react to it.
I agree with you that it was useful for completeness to read this paper and the shape-changing mobile. I did like that they tested different experiments, but it seems like they could have generalized them into one paper so that people would not need to go back and forth in order to get the full picture.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it would be very interesting to know what they plan to do with the ability to shift weight around a device. I can't, off the top of my head, think of many forms of information it could communicate that couldn't as easily be done by existing technology.
ReplyDeleteReading this paper clarified a few things for me, such as why weight-shifting was not very popular, however It does seem redundant to do two seperate papers for weight-shifting and shape-shifting. I think the main reason for that is that since this technology is still in its infancy, the authors don't want to shoot down either one of them. Weight-shifting could have uses that we simply have not thought of yet.
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