Shared Phidgets: A Toolkit for Rapidly Prototyping Distributed Physical User Interfaces

Many physical user interfaces are best viewed as an interacting collection of remotely-located distributed hardware and software components. The problem is that current physical user interface toolkits do not normally offer distributed systems capabilities, leaving developers with extra burdens such as device discovery and management, lowlevel hardware access, and networking. Our solution is Shared Phidgets, a toolkit for rapidly prototyping distributed physical interfaces. This toolkit offers programmers several ways to easily access remotely located hardware components, including a powerful distributed model-viewcontroller object model. Network communication and lowlevel access to the device hardware are transparently handled, regardless of device location. The programmer can also create new abstract devices by transforming and aggregating low level hardware device capabilities. ACM Classification: H.5.2 [Information Interfaces]: User interfaces – input devices and strategies, interaction styles, prototyping, user-centered design General terms: Design, Human Factors