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Research in Mobile User Interfaces at Columbia University

Where are mobile user interfaces heading, other than the relentless
march toward ever smaller and faster PDAs and phones? This talk will
provide an overview of some of the research directions being explored
by Columbia’s Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab, ranging
beyond the desktop writ small.

One direction addresses wrist-worn interaction devices and displays,
with an emphasis on cursorless user interfaces. Here, the goal is to
eliminate the need for the mobile user to control and visually monitor
a cursor while they interact with the rich world around them. In
other work, we are collaborating with colleagues at the University of
Maryland, the Smithsonian Institution, and Columbia to develop
electronic field guides for botanists, using hand-held and head-worn
displays. Our prototype user interfaces allow a botanist to photograph
leaves in the field, invoke automated vision-based recognition
algorithms on the images, and support the botanist in examining ranked
sets of possible matches to assist in species identification.