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Greenberg, S. and Fitchett, C. (2001)
Phidgets: Easy Development of Physical Interfaces through Physical Widgets. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology – ACM UIST’01. (Orlando, Florida), ACM Press, pages 209-218, November 11-14.
Type: Refereed conference (full paper).
Additional materials: powerpoint presentation, companion video.
Awards: 🏆Best paper, and in 2011 🏆10-year impact.
DOI: 10.1145/502348.502388
Download as: Pdf and Companion video
Additional download: 
Powerpoint
Abstract.
Physical widgets or phidgets are to physical user interfaces what widgets are to graphical user interfaces. Similar to widgets, phidgets abstract and package input and output devices: they hide implementation and construction details, they expose functionality through a well-defined API, and they have an (optional) on-screen interactive interface for displaying and controlling device state. Unlike widgets, phidgets also require: a connection manager to track how devices appear on-line; a way to link a software phidget with its physical counterpart; and a simulation mode to allow the programmer to develop, debug and test a physical interface even when no physical device is present. Our evaluation shows that everyday programmers using phidgets can rapidly develop physical interfaces.