Design and Evaluation of Proxemics-Aware Environments to Support Navigation in Large Information Spaces

Abstract

In my research, I explore the use of proxemics in Human-Computer Interaction to design explicit and implicit interaction with knowledge work environments for literature review, reading & writing, or discussion. This paper proposes the employment of proxemics for different tasks in knowledge work such as navigation in large information spaces (e.g. zooming and panning). To evaluate different designs, I created a physical environment with interactive walls and multi-touch tables alongside displays of various sizes to form a multi-display environment that enables measuring proxemic relationships (e.g. for manipulating a digital viewport according to a user's location and orientation in physical space). The aim of my dissertation is to design and evaluate different navigation concepts for large information spaces that employ Proxemic Interactions.