Abstract |
The exponential growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and services along with the
emergence of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) paradigm unveiled new potentials for the
domain of domestic living, blurring the imaginary line between “the computer” and the
“‘intelligent’ environment”. The diversity of artifacts in the ‘intelligent’ living room
introduces a plethora of interaction challenges, stemming from the need for crossplatform migration of the available applications and highlights the requirement for a
unified interaction environment for the residents.
As a result of the advancements in surface computing, display monitors (physical displays)
that were initially used in ‘intelligent’ environments, can now be replaced by common
household surfaces, such as coffee-tables, benches, and walls, acting as displays with the
help of projection systems. However, user interaction and usability of such systems is still
subject to the current limitations of surface computing technologies.
To address these interaction issues, this thesis introduces FLUID, a web-based software
development kit (SDK) that provides an application hosting environment, explicitly
customized to be deployed on interactive surface displays, which binds available surface
computing applications under a common roof. FLUID grants the developers the ability to
compose and manage in real-time flexible and adaptable ‘surface-computing-webapplications’ through a rich application programming interface (API). Additionally, FLUID
offers a set of utilities that empowers designers of intelligent environments to evaluate
the behavior of their applications by simulating different scenarios of use.
In comparison to related work, FLUID offers an innovative, context-aware, user-centric
environment that not only hosts surface computing applications, but also resolves two
prominent surface computing issues: the occlusion of graphical user interfaces from
physical objects, as well as user interface ‘cluttering’. This is achieved through a
sophisticated and configurable virtual space management mechanism, through which
hosted applications get reorganized in an intelligent manner, ensuring a smooth User
Experience (UX) to their end-users.
In addition to the FLUID development kit, this thesis describes the design process and the
functionality of the SDK, elaborates on the implementation details, presents two case
studies that made use of it and discusses the results of an expert-based evaluation study
in the context of the Intelligent Home of ICS-FORTH.
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