Microsoft Research Presents "Code Space: Combining Touch, Devices, and Skeletal Tracking to Support Developer Meetings"

Today's Gallery entry is from Microsoft Research, the people that brought us the Kinect and Kinect for Windows SDK. We're hearing that the Kinect and Kinect for Windows SDK isn't just for gaming. Matter of fact, some of the coolest projects we've seen for the Kinect have nothing to do with games, instead with how it can change our lives and computer interactions in ways we've always dreamed of.

Doctors, teachers, researchers, even Search and Rescue, all are seeing cool Kinect projects.

But what about developers? We're writing all the cool Kinect code, but there's been little done for developers by developers in the Kinect space. (Well beyond this Gallery, all the cool code and component sharing Kinect dev's do, their examples, sharing, inspiration and all that, but you know what I mean...)

A team at Microsoft Research seems to have felt the same way...

Code Space: Combining Touch, Devices, and Skeletal Tracking to Support Developer Meetings

We present Code Space, a system that contributes touch + air gesture hybrid interactions to support co-located, small group developer meetings by democratizing access, control, and sharing of information across multiple personal devices and public displays. Our system uses a combination of a shared multi-touch screen, mobile touch devices, and Microsoft Kinect sensors. We describe cross-device interactions, which use a combination of in-air pointing for social disclosure of commands, targeting and mode setting, combined with touch for command execution and precise gestures. In a formative study, professional developers were positive about the interaction design, and most felt that pointing with hands or devices and forming hand postures are socially acceptable. Users also felt that the techniques adequately disclosed who was interacting and that existing social protocols would help to dictate most permissions, but also felt that our lightweight permission feature helped presenters manage incoming content.

Project Information URL: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=155373, http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/merrie/papers/codespace.pdf

Contact Information:

• Blog: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kenh/,  http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/merrie/, http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/rdeline/
• Twitter: @ken_hinckley @merrierm