Applying the Peephole Metaphor in a Mixed-Reality Room
We present the generalized peephole metaphor, a model of interaction
for ubiquitous computing and instrumented environments. The metaphor
provides a way of organizing and structuring ubiquitous in- and output
facilities in instrumented environments consisting of several
distributed but coordinated sensors and displays. Its main idea is to
look at the environment as one large display and sensor continuum,
in which peepholes provide localized and user-specific windows between
the physical environment and a virtual information layer. The
metaphor nicely matches models of human perception, for example the
fact that humans make use of external representation in their
environments and access information by guiding their attention to
specific locations.
We then present a specific MR room and show how a number of in- and
output activities can be described in terms of the peephole
metaphor. We discuss how the metaphor can cope with scalability and
access control and how it supports a family of interaction styles and
pre- sentation methods in instrumented environments. We analyze the
technological requirements for implementing the peephole metaphor and
show that it works very well with the limited hardware already
available today, such as projector-camera units, wall-mounted displays
and portable screens. Looking beyond today's technological
limitations, we argue that peepholes will be a particularly helpful
metaphor for structuring interaction with hardware which might be
available in the future, such as room-covering interactive displays in
the form of e-ink wallpapers and ubiquitous gesture recognition.
Keywords: H.5.1.b Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities, H.5.2.i
Interaction styles