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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. Includes companion video, duration 6:10.
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
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Powerpoint – preview (below) only works for smaller files
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.