FLUIDUM

FLexible User Interfaces for Distributed Ubiquitous Machinery

The Fluidum project investigates interaction techniques and metaphors for ubiquitous computing. In different scenarios, we take everyday environments, such as an office, a kitchen, bathroom plumbing and a living room, and add technology to them. The resulting environments are called instrumented environments. We have set up such an instrumented environment in our lab at the University of Munich. It contains various display and sensing technologies which make most of its surfaces and furniture interactive.

Starting from the scenarios, we are designing interaction techniques and metaphors which borrow from the physical world, and evaluate them in prototype implementations. Some of our prototypes are shown on these pages. In the course of the project we hope to find common principles for interaction which hold in all of our scenarios, and sum them up in a set of design guidelines for intercation with ubiquitous computing.

The Fluidum project is funded by "Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft" (DFG) under a young investigator award (Emmy-Noether-Stipendium) to Andreas Butz. It started at Saarland University in 2003, moved to the University of Munich in 2004, and will end in 2008. If you would like to learn more about Fluidum, use these pages as a starting point, but don't hesitate to contact us.