Patrick Baudisch

Display walls are turning personal

 

Abstract

Just a decade ago, display walls were available only to the military and a few research organizations. But things have changed. The prices of digital projectors have dropped and operating systems have learned to drive multi display installations from a single PC. As a result, a broad audience of casual users has started to create, use, and benefit from large personal displays. The display setups they create range from dual-monitor setups to stitched projections and table-top displays.

 

The new user base, however, comes with its own requirements. While the early display walls were often used with only a single, highly customized application, today's casual users expect their large displays to run a broad range of applications including standard operating systems, productivity applications, and interactive games.

 

But the attempt to transfer these applications from the desktop to a large display often fails in a variety of ways. The reason is that the fundamental interaction concepts that today’s operating systems are based on were designed for the desktop. When transferred to a much larger display, users have trouble reaching display content, manipulating display content precisely, and keeping track of display content and input devices. Fatigue becomes a major issue.

 

In this talk, I present a selection of large displays projects from my past six years at Xerox PARC and Microsoft Research. I will present display hardware and input devices prototypes, as well as interaction and visualization techniques that help users interact with this promising new class of display systems.

 

More information at http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects