This post is a sequel to my ITS 2013 report. Both ITS 2013 and UIST 2013 were held one after another, the transition was very smooth. As many of the participants used this opportunity to attend both conferences, one could almost fail to notice the change if it were not for the slight shift of scope from surface technologies to general user interface research.
The UIST 2013 started with an interesting invited talk by Raffaello D’Andrea about the work of his group on control systems for quad-copters from the perspective of human-robot interaction.
The conference then progressed in similar manner to ITS 2013. Single track, poster sessions between coffee breaks. As an outside observer I find the UIST community somehow less cozy (perhaps because it is bigger) than the ITS community, however, as a computer vision researcher I really find both communities very open minded and acceptable to fresh ideas. Then again, perhaps I am being naive. I really liked the demo session and the student competition (student groups had to create novel user-interface ideas using an automatic fountain kit). The following presented topics also stuck in my head:
- Fotokite – a quadcopter camera system
- Bayesian target selection that uses different shape similarities to select multiple objects
- Transmogrification – a cool deformation utility
- Panopticon – intuitive video thumbnails
- Generating energy by rubbing paper
- Interface for navigation over multiple videos sharing a common panorama
- Various hand-based private, unobtrusive and intuitive interaction with wearable interfaces
- Fast gaze calibration
