ACM ITS 2010 – Panel

Past and Future of Interactive Surfaces: ITS great! ITS relevant?

The topic of interactive tabletops and interactive surfaces has enjoyed a significant growth in the past two decades both in academia and in the industry. The early academic research on ClearBoard, DigitalDesk, Holowall, Diamond Touch, and FTIR-based tabletops has since transitioned into the domain of commercial products by Microsoft, Smart, Perceptive Pixel, etc. More recently consumer products such as the iPhone, iPad, HP TouchSmart, are re-shaping the consumer arena significantly. To understand the challenges ahead (both in research and in practice), we believe that the field could benefit from a discussion and introspection on the past, present and future of interactive surface computing.

Predicting the future is always difficult, but we’d like to open up the discussion to understand what were some of the most seminal pieces of research that shaped the ITS community in the past, what are some of the trends we see in it today, and what are the technologies that can significantly impact our field in the future. Many technologies and interactions we see in the market today are in-line with findings and proposals from research, but other developments challenge the ways we think about interactive surfaces. For example, ITS remains focused on interactive tabletop form factor while that class of devices remains a niche area in the market today. In the same time, touch is becoming a de-facto standard way of interacting on phones and computers today. We would like to open up this discussion to the entire community on how to conduct our research in interactions, proxemics, technology, and applications, to lead the innovation of the interactive surfaces of tomorrow.

Panelists:

• Patrick Baudisch (Hasso Plattner Institute)
• Sheelagh Carpandale (U. Calgary)
• Sriram Subramanian (U. Bristol)
• Ed Tse (SMART)
• Andy Wilson (Microsoft Research)

Organizers: Hrvoje Benko, Microsoft Research Otmar Hilliges, Microsoft Research