Steve Benford - Research

 

My research is focused on advanced interaction and communication technologies for rich and dynamic social interaction.

 

This involves creating new interactive technologies including:

 

·         Novel interactive surfaces, for example:

o        Using everyday flashlights to interact with walls and posters

o        Traversable interfaces that enable participants to step into a virtual world by passing through a projected image

o        Pushback tangible interfaces such as pouts (pop-out-pins)

·         Mobile and location-based interfaces

o        Interfaces that are designed with disconnection and unreliable positioning in mind

o        Location-based 3D displays for outdoors such as the Augurscope

·         Collaborative virtual environments

o        Techniques for broadcasting interaction from within multi-user virtual worlds

o        Techniques for recording and reusing the action from within multi-user virtual worlds

 

Demonstrating novel uses of these in areas such as:

·         Live performance

o        Working with artists to create touring performances, most notably a series of collaborations with the artists group Blast Theory – Desert Rain, Can You See Now and Uncle Roy All Around You- that have toured internationally since 1999

·         Play and learning, including

o        Mobile educational games

o        Tangible toys for young children

o        Using mobile sensors to learn about the environment

·         Television

o        The idea of ‘Inhabited Television’ in which viewers metaphorically step through the screen to become live participants in an online TV show that is then broadcast to a watching audience

·         Museums and exploratoria

o        Interactive experiences in which visitors use a combination of mobile technologies and fixed installations to explore a site of special interest

 

And studying them in use so as to inform further technology development and draw out general design principles such as:

·       A framework for designing sensing based interfaces

·       A framework for designing the spectator view of an experience

·       Exploring the role of ambiguity in interface design

·       An exploration of persistence and change in the home

·       The spatial model of interaction for managing social interaction in collaborative virtual environment

·       A taxonomy of mixed reality boundaries for connecting virtual and physical spaces