Lisa Elkin

Project description: For my master's work at the University of Waterloo, I designed and fabricated a cuboid-shaped tangible pen-like input device. I 3D modeled and 3D printed a conductive outer case that can be used on any capacitive touch-screen. An IMU inside the device senses its orientation and transmits this information to a laptop over wifi. Machine learning techniques use angle data from the IMU to determine which of the 26 corners, edges, or sides, of the device contacts the touch-screen. The idea is to map different commands to each contact for easy command selection that doesn't take up screen space. Two important usability questions arise: How long does it take users to manipulate the device and does this depend on its size; and Can anyone actually learn the location of all 26 commands (spoiler, yes!)? This work was used in my master's thesis and was published at CHI 2020.

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Peer-Reviewed Paper: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376772

Peer-Reviewed Demo: https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3383157

Thesis: https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/13205

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Collaborators: Jean-Baptiste Beau, Géry Casiez, Daniel Vogel

 

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