Teams in so-called project rooms often use large areas of assembled sheets of paper (usually covering the walls) to create and organize their information. Examples are large project overviews in terms of its parts, their relationships and dependencies. But the need for large visual areas is not restricted to the organizational aspect. In many cases, even more important is the possibility for displaying, annotating and editing large contents which is not without problems, especially in the paper-based situation. Display space on paper or by an electronic information device is a crucial point for most visually-oriented tasks.

Furthermore, in the electronic version the requirement is to be able to interact with the content in a very intuitive way relying on standard gestures known from the interaction with the physical objects in the real / paper world. The objective of the DynaWall®, one of the roomware® components of the i-LAND project, is to represent a computer-based device that serves these needs. It can be considered an "interactive electronic wall" represented by a touch-sensitive information device.

The current realization at FHG-IPSI uses three rear-projection electronic whiteboards (SMART Boards™) with a total display size of 4.5 m width and 1.1 m height and a resolution of 3072 by 768 pixels. It fills one side of the room completely. The DynaWall enables groups like project teams to display and to interact with large information structures collaboratively. The goal is to support two or more persons, either individually, in parallel or sharing the whole display space.

The size of the DynaWall opens a new set of human-computer interactions. It is possible that information objects can be taken at one position and put somewhere else on the display or thrown from one side to the opposite side. Dialog boxes always appear in front of the current user(s). User interface components are always at hand, etc. These features are realized by advanced interaction mechanisms based on the pengui|n concept.

Related Publications:
Th. Prante, N. A. Streitz, P. Tandler
Roomware: Computers Disappear and Interaction Evolves.
In: IEEE Computer, December, 2004. pp. 47-54.

N. A. Streitz, P. Tandler, C. Müller-Tomfelde, S. Konomi
Roomware: Towards the Next Generation of Human-Computer Interaction based on an Integrated Design of Real and Virtual Worlds.
In: J. Carroll (Ed.): Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millenium, Addison-Wesley, 2001. pp. 553-578.

Streitz, N.A., Geißler, J., Holmer, T., Konomi, S., Müller-Tomfelde, C., Reischl, W., Rexroth, P., Seitz, P., and Steinmetz, R.
i-LAND: An interactive Landscape for Creativitiy and Innovation
Published in: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '99) , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., May 15-20, 1999.
ACM Press, New York, pp. 120-127.
Please click here to download the full paper (pdf file).

Streitz, N.A., Geißler, J., Holmer, T..
Roomware® for Cooperative Buildings: Integrated Design of Architectural Spaces and Information Spaces.
In N. Streitz, S. Konomi, H. Burkhardt (Eds.), Cooperative Buildings - Integrating Information, Organization, and Architecture. Proceedings of CoBuild98, Darmstadt, Germany.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1370. Springer: Heidelberg, 1998, pp. 4-21.

Contact Person:
Dr. Dr. Norbert Streitz( )