LiquidText | Multitouch Document Manipulation

Two Papers Published on LiquidText

Craig — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:46:51 +0000

We recently presented two full, peer-reviewed papers on LiquidText at the CHI 2011 conference held in Vancouver, BC (see press release)!

The first paper comes from our formative research and discusses many of the problems that people face when reading text using traditional technology–either pen and paper or PC’s. It also talks about an investigation into what people want in an ideal, future reading technology, including mock-ups and designs made by readers!

The second paper discusses the LiquidText system itself. We explain the design process for the system, including our goals and methodologies, how its design was informed by our studies. We also talk about many of the tradeoffs and challenges that went into developing this design.

Great Demo

Craig — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 03:20:33 +0000

I just got back to Atlanta from the Northeast, where I had the opportunity to demo the latest prototype version of LiquidText to a very impressive technology company. LiquidText got a very positive reception, and we discussed several avenues for extending the technology into different market sectors. Their business is a bit different than ours, but it seemed that there could be very promising roads to a partnership or collaboration there.

I’ll post more as the situation unfolds…

Hope everyone’s off to a great weekend!
-Craig

Extra Large Tablet

Craig — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 03:44:24 +0000

For one of our usability studies, we needed to be able to run LiquidText on a thin, light-ish tablet-PC type of device. Unfortunately the real tablet PCs were a bit too small for our purposes; the Dell XT2, for example, has a 12.1″ display. After exploring several options, we decided to convert one of Dell’s recently discontinued Studio 17″ multitouch laptops into a tablet-PC.

The process sounded a bit scary, especially since we don’t have many spare multitouch laptops lying around. Nonetheless, I went for it. After separating the monitor hinges from the base, and carefully disconnecting the various cables that connect the two halves of the laptop, I found that the cables really weren’t long enough for me to change the position of the monitor to anything more tablet-ish. So I took off the monitor bezel, and found that with a bit of rerouting, there was enough cable length to put the monitor on the “bottom” of the laptop and still have everything reach its destination. I did this, and glued everything together, and the result seemed pretty solid.

My concern, though, was that significant EMI might be leaking out the bottom of the unit and interfere with the extremely sensitive projected-capacitive multitouch sensor. Happily, it didn’t–probably because the bottom of the laptop and the back of the monitor each have grounding planes. The other concern, which did not really occur to me at the time, was heat–since the electronics were now under the monitor and sending warm air right onto it. Nothing bad has happened so far, and I guess I’m hoping the thick plastic backing on the monitor will be adequate for now. But if I decide to continue to use the unit for the later, bigger studies, I’ll probably want to add some extra heat sinking.