Spatially aware displays for PDAs (Anders Jacobsen's blog)

January 28, 2003

Spatially aware displays for PDAs

Following up on my interest for wearable computers and PDAs, my friend Agnar sent me this link describing Ka-Ping Yee' Peephole Displays research.

Peephole Displays: Pen Interaction on Spatially Aware Handheld Computers

The small size of handheld computers provides the convenience of mobility at the expense of reduced screen space for display and interaction. [...] Enabling simultaneous navigation and manipulation yields the ability to create and edit objects larger than the screen and to drag and drop in 3-D. Four prototypes of the Peephole Display hardware were built, and several Peephole-augmented applications were written, including a drawing program, map viewer, and calendar. Multiple applications can be embedded into a personal information space anchored to the user's physical reference frame. A usability study with 24 participants shows that the Peephole technique can be more effective than current methods for navigating information on handheld computers.

Unfortunately the site was slashdotted, but the video clip is mirrored here (ahlthough I had some problems viewing the file), and good old Google has cached the withdrawn paper here.