Demos
From OZCHI
Demonstrations (demos) offer a unique opportunity to display, interact with and discuss new technologies. This year demos will be available on Wednesday and Thursday over lunch (12.30 p.m.-1.30 p.m.) and afternoon coffee (3.00 p.m.-3.30 p.m.) on both days in Room A1 015. There are 6 demos in total - 4 reviewed demos and 2 invited demons. Some demos will also be presented. Details of the individual demos are below.
REVIEWED DEMONSTRATIONS
Telling Country: Exploring the Cross-cultural Complexities of Place in the History of Northeast Tasmania
Linn Miller (Riawunna, University of Tasmania) and Paul Turnbull (Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University)
In this demonstration, we discuss several of the more important intellectual, ethical and technical issues associated with creating an online resource exploring the meanings and values of landscape and place in the Aboriginal history of northeast Tasmania during the early colonial period. An important feature of this resource is an edition of the journal kept by George Augustus Robinson (1791-1866) during his so-called ‘Friendly Mission’ to the Aboriginal Tasmanian peoples of the northeast between October 1830 and October 1831. This journal is one of a series in which he meticulously recorded on a daily basis observations of places, people and events he encountered during his five year mission to persuade Aboriginal Tasmanians to leave their ancestral home-lands on the Tasmanian mainland and to be eventually placed under government protection on Flinders Island in eastern Bass Strait.
full demo submission (PDF, 64KB)
The Little Grey Cat Engine: Telling Small Stories
truna aka j.turner (The Australasian CRC for Interaction Design Pty Ltd. (ACID))
The little grey cat engine (greyCat) is part of a series of projects which explore software which can enable access to the potentially empowering nature of represented space and game design. GreyCat is the result of research into the culture of the software itself in order to provide participatory environments which enable the telling of ‘small stories’ – stories and experiences which are those of the everyday or those of a cultural perspective other than that prioritised by most world building softwares or game engines. GreyCat offers a simple framework which allows participants to use their own image materials (photographs for the most part) as a basis for spatial exploration of their own places.
full demo submission (PDF, 264KB)
Interactivated Reading Table
Bert Bongers and Alejandra Mery (University of Technology Sydney)
A mixed media reading table has been developed and presented to the public on various occasions. The aim is to create an integrated experience for the users, bringing together traditional media (such as books) with new media (such as video). The table uses RFID technology to link the physical objects to the media content. The project is submitted as a demo for the conference.
full demo submission (PDF, 464KB)
Information Marketplace: Supporting Experience Sharing in Proximity Using Mobile Technology
Chao-Lung Lee, Yun-Maw Cheng, Ching-Long Yeh, Li-Chieh Chen (Tatung University), Wai Yu (Thales Air Defence Ltd.) and Kuan-Ta Chen (Academia Sinica)
Social Proximity Applications (SPAs) have prompted a promising opportunity for mobile services that utilize the changes in daily life in the proximity of mobile users. This paper describes our research-in-progress about designing and developing a mobile SPA, which facilitates social interaction among visitors in a night market crowd. This application allows night market visitors to share their experiences in photos with nearby others via their Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. The design was based on a two-week field observation in an attempt to investigate the motivations and attitudes towards applications of this type. After a three-night extensive trial we found the value of the application - playful, and enjoyable, yields high consistency with results from field observation. The ultimate goal is to identify potential engaging design extensions to the current prototype.
full demo submission (PDF, 260KB)
INVITED DEMONSTRATIONS
iFISH: engaging demonstrations
Jon Pearce (University of Melbourne)
There are search engines; there are recommender systems; there are browsing environments. Then there is iFISH. iFISH started life as an research application, the aim of which was to resesrch ways of engaging students in an exploratory task. The research focus was on how to make a mundane task interesting and engaging using current web technologies. We needed a task that had the potential for exploratory behaviour, was non-trivial, and complex enough to justify engagement with a computer application.
full demo submission (PDF, 540KB)
Smart Garden Watering Demonstration
Jon Pearce (University of Melbourne) and John Murphy (Design4Use) and Wally Smith (University of Melbourne)
This demonstration will present a Flash-based online tool designed to help gardeners determine a watering schedule for their gardens and assist in the planning for the use of a water tank. The project was funded by the 2006 Smart Water Fund (Vic) and is described more fully in a paper by the authors at this conference (Pearce et al, 2008).
full demo submission (PDF, 216KB)