Journals
Special Issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Springer-Verlag London, 2003
Designing to minimise the social consequences arising from technology use by the mobile professional
A. Toney, B. Mulley, B. H. Thomas, W. Piekarski
(An envited expansion of the ISWC 2002 work)
This paper defines the concept of social weight as a design consideration and presents the e-SUIT, a social weight research platform incorporated covertly within a traditional business suit. The e-SUIT allows its user to strike a balance between a given technology's derived benefit and its social consequence. As the e-SUIT is designed for research within a business context it is built upon commercially available enterprise software. This work is a first step towards subjecting the empirical social interactive phenomena of wearable technology to quantitative design anaclasis. Proof of concept testing shows access to commercially available enterprise applications with distinct, user selectable, strata of social weight.
Conferences
Sixth International Symposium on Wearable Computers, October 07th - 10th, 2002
Minimal Social Weight User Interactions for Wearable Computers in Business Suits
A. Toney, B. Mulley, B. H. Thomas, W. Piekarski
This paper presents the e-SUIT, a wearable computer incorporated in a traditional business suit. A key feature of the system is an array of input/output devices integrated into the garment. These devices are connected to a network bus incorporated into the suit jacket. The network connects the jackets sensors and I/O with a Compaq iPAQ operating Windows CE. The iPAQ is connected to the users personal information systems via a wireless LAN. Demonstrated within is an application allowing the e-SUIT to control the factory installed Microsoft Pocket Outlook. Pocket Outlook is a functioning business class application that allows the proof of concept testing to be performed on an integrated product used in the marketplace.
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Seventh International Symposium on Wearable Computers, October 21st - 23rd, 2003
A Shoulder Pad Insert Vibrotactile Display
Aaron Toney, Lucy Dunne, Bruce H. Thomas, Susan P. Ashdown
Touch is the most intimate and inherently private human sense and provides the potential for discrete, low social weight human computer interaction. This paper presents initial research findings on issues of integrating a vibrotatcitle display and support electronics into a standard clothing insert, the shoulder pad. Research on construction methods is presented along with a discussion of the merits and drawbacks of each technique. User study data for response to tactile display stimuli, collected with a varying number of stimulators, is then presented with initial conclusions as to the type and format of data suitable for shoulder based tactile arrays.
Download a PDF version of the paper. A Powerpoint version of the presentation slides is also available.
Managing Smart Garments
A. Toney, B. H. Thomas, Wynand Marais
Ease of maintenance and management of smart garments (garments with integrated electronics) is crucial to their user acceptability and commercial viability. This paper presents a system that addresses user needs of easy garment charging, storage, and synchronization. The HBar smart hanger system is a novel system consisting of a set of augmented garments and coat hangers to fulfill the requirements of a smart garment management system.
Download a PDF version. A Powerpoint version of the presentation slides is also available.
Applying Reach in Direct Manipulation User Interfaces
Applying Reach in Direct Manipulation User
A. Toney, B. H. Thomas
The HCI community currently faces the problem of making tangible user interfaces actively responsive to their user's current physical context. This paper explores the context of direct manipulation user interfaces for large horizontal interactive displays. Knowledge of user's reach provides direct manipulation user interfaces with a powerful tool for contextualizing and predicting user action. This paper introduces user's reach as a formal way to predict the previously observed phenomena of workspace segmentation and territoriality. By creating models of reachability, reach probability surfaces can be generated which further explain the impact on workspace usage of the shape, height, and position of the workspace. As the presented techniques build on formal qualitative and mathematical models of reach, they lend themselves particularly well to an algorithmic implementation suited to driving complex user interface behavior. This paper presents the results of an initial user study to determine the accuracy of these predictions and their underlying hypotheses about reaches role in shaping workspace usage.
Download a PDF version. A PowerPoint version of the presentation slides is also available.
AUIC, January 30th - February 2nd, 2007
Modeling Reach for use in User Interface Design
A. Toney, B. H. Thomas
This paper presents the anthropometric parameters of reach as a central concern to both tangible and direct touch user interface design. The paper begins with an introduction to existing literature on reach modeling. As the models in the literature were intended for a stationary individual, a user study was conducted measuring impact of freedom of motion on the maximum reported comfortable reach envelope. The study showed the impact on workspace usage caused by changes in the user's body position, orientation, and in the working surfaces height and shape. Finally, the paper presents several ways in which these reach models can be immediately applied to user interface design.
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Workshops
Subtle Garment Integration of Technology: A Case Study of the Business Suit
Lucy Dunne, Aaron Toney, Susan P. Ashdown, Bruce H. Thomas
Integration of technology into standard apparel poses many difficult problems: for the consumer, integration in such a way that technology does not create physical or social discontinuities, and for the manufacturer, development of a production process for integrating technology into apparel. In this paper, we seek to specify the component factors of these problems, and propose a solution within the confines of the business suit.
The business suit represents a standardized garment system, containing pre-existing volumes created by padding or stiffening agents, which create the 3-dimensional tailored shape. We propose exploitation of these volumes to house technology, without requiring a change in the aesthetic appearance of the individual garments or altering the user's perception of the garment system. Creation of stand-alone technology units in the form of garment inserts removes the need for high-level integration of the apparel and technology production processes.
Download a PDF version of the paper.
October 18th-21st, 2005 - Osaka, Japan
The potential for real time posture detection through garment-integrated electrostatic sensors
Aaron Toney, Bruce H. Thomas
On body devices, and the busses that interconnect them, present a unique opportunity for on body sensing technologies. By gathering electrostatic data about their user and their environment, it is possible to model the user's electrostatic interaction with their environment. Through these models an intuitive understanding of the user's electrostatic ecology is developed allowing the ability to draw meaningful inference about posture and relative body orientation.
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January 5th-7th, 2006
Adelaide, South Australia
Considering Reach in Tangible and Table Top Design
Aaron Toney, Bruce H. Thomas
Reach heavily impacts all aspects of designing for tangible and tabletop user interfaces. It dictates the input space available to each user and heavily shapes how that space is used. Despite its impact to date tangible, table top, and user interface design have all largely overlooked reach as a design constraint. As a result advancing the state of the art for tangible and table top designs requires rethinking existing designs to consider the repercussions of reach, and starting to formally consider reach as part of our designs process. Designing in consideration of reach will allow for more usable tables, applications supporting diverse environments, and user interfaces which are optimally scaled to their current set of users.
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Posters
A Novel Method for Joint Motion Sensing on a Wearable Computer
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Classes
5th-6th December 2000, Vienna, Austria
"What is a Wearable Computer?", Metrics for Assessing Wearable Devices
Presented by Joshua Klein and Aaron Toney - Circus Systems
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