June 3, 2002 1

Origami Desk Integrating Technological Innovation and Human-centric Design Research

Wendy JuDesign DivisionMechanical Engineering

DepartmentStanford University

June 3, 2002 2

Origami Desk: Project DescriptionWendy Ju

project leadinteraction design

Tilke JuddRebecca HurwitzJennifer Yoon

interface design

Leonardo Bonanni architecture

Wendy JuMatthew ReynoldsRichard FletcherRehmi Post

hardware and software

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Research in Interactive SpacesInteractive environments can help people do things

and learn to do things, not just do things for them.1

Principles of interactive environment design include: invisibility, manual override, feedback and adaptability.2

These principles require technological innovations that allow people to get feedback and adaptation without explicit interaction with a computer.3

1 Bush, “ As We May Think,” The Atlantic Monthly. July 1945: 101-1082 Cooperstock, Fels, Buxton, Smith, Reactive Environments, Com.ACM, Sept 1997: 65-733 Neilson, “Noncommand User Interfaces,” Communications of the ACM, April 1993: 83-99

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Difficulties people have folding origami:

mapping instructions to spatial locations. (Where do I fold?)

translating discrete diagrams to dynamic actions. (How do I fold?)

perceiving if they are proceeding correctly. (Did I fold this right?)

A key problem is the disjoint between real and virtual worlds. 1

1 Ockerman, Najjar, Thompson “Evaluation of a wearable computer performance support system” in Educational Multimedia/Hypermedia and Telecommunications. 1997:788-793

User Experiences with Origami

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Human-centric reasons for fold-sensing Provides positive feedback Decreases uncertainty Prevents errors early in process

Technological reasons for fold-sensing Origami is a spatial task Instructions are easily modeled Paper provides a tangible means of tracking

progress Lessons, technologies can be generalized to

other spatial, linear tasks.

Fold Sensing in Origami Desk

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Advantages of tags: 1,2 Low cost Consistent response Obstruction

independent Orientation

independent

Hypothesis: Radio-frequency Electromagnetic coils (“tags”) can be used to sense dynamic act of folding

1 Want, Fishkin, Gujar, Harrison. “Bridging Physical and Virtual Worlds with Electronic Tags,” in Computer Human Interactions 1999 (CHI’99): 370-3772 Gershenfeld, Fletcher. US Patent No. 6025725A: Electrically Active Resonant Structures for Wireless Monitoring and Control, MIT Media Lab 2000

Electromagnetic Tags for Fold Sensing

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Fold Sensing System Design

June 3, 2002 8

Fold Sensing System Design

Hardware Software

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Fold Sensing: Paper

Five resonant tags (8.2, 12.9, 15.4, 21.5, 25.5 MHz) from Miyake, Inc.

Tested for variations in tag placement, folding

18 unique signatures out of 28 possible positions detectable

Mounted on 15cmx15cm translucent vellum paper

The Origami paper was designed to provide feedback on a folded box pattern.

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Fold Sensing: Tag Reader Design

Swept-frequency sensor with 18cmx18cm single turn copper coil

Frequency range between 6.5 MHz to 26.5 MHz

~10 sweeps a second, sampling at 0.2MHz intervals

The fold sensing reader was modified from an existing tag-sensor design.

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Fold Sensing: Data OutputNo

rmal

ized

Vo

ltage

Frequency

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Fold Sensing: State RecognitionSimple state recognition was used to

determine what steps users were at. Used 5-point running average with

baseline subtracted out. Picked frequencies where delta V reading

was above threshold. Assigned peaks to various frequency

“buckets.” Formed 8-bit bucket signature to map to

various states.

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Technical Design Results

Fold sensing demonstrated promise in the lab: Can consistently distinguish sub-folds for eight of the eleven steps for Origami Box Register folds three out of four times in practice Robust in face of sensor placement, user fold speeds, station variations

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Human-centered Design ResultsFold sensing did NOT lead to success in field: Limited field testing: differing noise conditions, and

need automated setup and calibration routines. Limited user response: feedback response was too

subtle and somewhat inconsistent, occasionally motivated bad folding to see response.

Introducing new failure modes: thickness of the paper and tags made folding physically harder.

No net negative impact due to design for technological risk mitigation.

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Failure AnalysisTypical user failure modes changed with design of

rest of system. Difficulty resolving video instructions. Reorientation Forget substeps

Demonstrated functionality and “real” functionality are very different things. Wider array of test populations, conditions Need to decouple feedback response design from

sensing mechanismInitial design overlooked setup and calibration as

aspects in system design.

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Design Guidelines (in progress)

Invisibility Coherency: Make tools usage, intent self-evident without distracting from core task.

Adaptability: Test in near field conditions with wide array of user populations

Feedback: Use wizard-of-oz techniques to test feedback mechanisms independently of sensing technologies

Comprehensiveness: Use solutions that integrate not only dynamic capabilities of computers, but also of physical context, perspective, process and interaction

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Paths to Publication Criticisms:

What is original about this work? What is the right way to situate the work? What is the proper way to capture user response? What is the important contribution made in this

work?

Audience: More technical venue? More design-oriented venue? More education-oriented venue?

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Future work… Design methodology, metrics

Interdisciplinary design methods Formalization of user needs, systems

interactions Event recognition and inference

User workflow modeling Multi-sensor strategies for robustness,

breadth “Smarter” event inference techniques

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Questions?