Designing Tangible Interfaces for Richer Media Experiences
Scott R. Klemmer
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA, USA 94305-9035
srk@cs.stanford.edu
Tangible user interfaces (tuis) augment the physical world by integrating digital information
with everyday physical objects. Developing tangible interfaces is problematic because programmers are responsible for acquiring and abstracting physical input. This is difficult, timeconsuming, and requires a high level of technical expertise in fields very different from userinterface development — especially in the case of computer vision. Consequently, only a small
cadre of technology experts can currently build these uis. Based on a literature review andstructured interviews with tui researchers, we created Papier-Mâché [2, 4], a toolkit forbuilding tangible interfaces using computer vision, electronic tags, and barcodes. PapierMâché introduces high-level abstractions for working withthese input technologies that facilitates technology
portability. We evaluated this toolkit through a laboratory
study and longitudinal use in course and research projects,
finding the input abstractions, technology portability, andmonitoring facilities to be highly effective. In this talk, I will
discuss new software tools and interaction techniques for tangible user interface input. This
work comprises Papier-Mâché, a toolkit for building tangible uis; Books with Voices, a systemproviding barcode-augmented paper transcripts for random access to digital video; and The
Designers’ Outpost, a tangible ui for collaborative web site design.
Papier-Mâché’s design has been deeply influenced by my experiences building physicalinterfaces. Web designers use pens, paper, walls, and tables
for explaining, developing, and communicating ideas during
the early phases of design. These practices inspired The
Designers’ Outpost [1, 2, 5, 6]. With Outpost, users collaboratively author web site information architectures on anelectronic whiteboard using physical media (Post-it notes
and images), structuring and annotating that information
with electronic pens. This interaction is enabled by a touch-sensitive electronic whiteboard augmented with a computer vision system. We conducted
several studies of this system that validated that Outpost supports information architecture
work practice and led us to develop support for design history, remote collaboration, andfluid interoperability with other design tools.
The second major tui we developed focused on oral historians. While oral historians
consider interview recordings a central historical artifact, these recordings sit unused after awritten transcript is produced. We hypothesized that this islargely because books are more usable than recordings.
Therefore, we created Books with Voices [2, 3]: barcodeaugmented paper transcripts enabling fast, random access todigital video interviews on a pda. Our evaluation found thislightweight, structured access to original recordings to offer
substantial benefits with minimal overhead. Both theDesigners’ Outpost and Books with Voices could have been built in a fraction of the time ifthe Papier-Mâché toolkit had been available.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 Everitt, Katherine M., Scott R. Klemmer, Robert Lee, and James A. Landay. Two Worlds
Apart: Bridging the Gap Between Physical and Virtual Media for Distributed DesignCollaboration. CHI: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI
Letters 5(1). pp. 553–60, 2003.
2 Klemmer, Scott R., Tangible User Interface Input: Tools and Techniques, Unpublished
PhD, University of California, Computer Science, Berkeley, CA, 2004.
http://hci.stanford.edu/srk/KlemmerDissertation.pdf
3 Klemmer, Scott R., Jamey Graham, Gregory J. Wolff, and James A. Landay. Books withVoices: Paper Transcripts as a Tangible Interface to Oral Histories. CHI: ACM Conferenceon Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI Letters 5(1): ACM Press. pp. 89–96, 2003.
4 Klemmer, Scott R., Jack Li, James Lin, and James A. Landay. Papier-Mâché: Toolkit
Support for Tangible Input. CHI: ACM Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems, CHI Letters 6(1). pp. 399–406, 2004.
5 Klemmer, Scott R., Mark W. Newman, Ryan Farrell, Mark Bilezikjian, and James A.
Landay. The Designers’ Outpost: A Tangible Interface for Collaborative Web Site Design.
UIST: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, CHI Letters 3(2). pp.
1–10, 2001.

6 Klemmer, Scott R., Michael Thomsen, Ethan Phelps-Goodman, Robert Lee, and James A.
Landay. Where Do Web Sites Come From? Capturing and Interacting with Design History.
CHI: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI Letters 4(1). pp. 1–8, 2002.
BIOGRAPHY

Scott Klemmer is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. He
received a dual BA in Art-Semiotics and Computer Science from Brown University in 1999,
and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2001 and 2004 respectively.
His research addresses tangible user interfaces and user interface software tools. Several of his
research systems have had commercial impact: the suede speech design tool has been usedand extended by dozens of companies; The Designers’ Outpost system for vision-based
capture of walls inspired product features at smart Technologies; and the handheld Books
with Voices system helped fuel advanced development at Ricoh Innovations.