Prototyping Applications for the Physical World Using Integrated Capture/Playback Facilities

Abstract
Designers of digital applications that deal with complicated infrastructures in the physical world often deal with the formidable challenges of working in a specific place. During development and testing, the designer must constantly move around the physical space to debug or test new interactions. In outdoor settings, factors such as weather, poor work ergonomics, and the lack of power and networking are serious impediments for designers. Our strategy is to use a flexible capture/playback infrastructure, which is tightly integrated into a design environment for prototyping physical applications. We are able to capture the sensor data necessary to design and test applications that can then be easily deployed to the real environment. We will demonstrate this approach within the context of DART (the Designer’s Augmented Reality Toolkit) by showing how augmented reality applications (such as mocking up the placement of information displays) can be quickly prototyped and tested using captured data sets. The capture/playback method breaks the requirement that sensors be used synchronously, in real-time, in the actual location. The flexible programming environment of Director, used by DART, will allow us to demonstrate this design process to conference attendees.

Full Reference:
Steven Dow, Blair MacIntyre, Maribeth Gandy, and Jay David Bolter. “Prototyping Applications for the Physical World Using Integrated Capture/Playback Facilities.” UbiComp (UBICOMP04) demo, September 7-10, 2004, Nottingham, U.K..