Karl Rosenberg

Ken Perlin, Zhenyi He, Karl Rosenberg

In the context of a classroom lesson, concepts must be visualized and organized in many ways depending on the needs of the teacher and students. Traditional presentation media such as the blackboard or electronic whiteboard allow for static hand-drawn images, and slideshow software may be used to generate linear sequences of text and pre-animated images. However, none of these media support the creation of dynamic visualizations that can be manipulated, combined, or re-animated in real-time, and so demonstrating new concepts or adapting to changes in the requirements of a presentation is a challenge. Thus, we propose Chalktalk as a solution. Chalktalk is an open-source presentation and visualization tool in which the user's drawings are recognized as animated and interactive "sketches," which the user controls via mouse gestures. Sketches help users demonstrate and experiment with complex ideas (e.g. computer graphics, procedural animation, logic) during a live presentation without needing to create and structure all content ahead of time. Because sketches can interoperate and be programmed to represent underlying data in multiple ways, Chalktalk presents the opportunity to visualize key concepts in computer science: especially data structures, whose data and form change over time due to the variety of interactions within a computer system. To show Chalktalk's capabilities, we have prototyped sketch implementations for binary search tree (BST) and stack (LIFO) data structures, which take advantage of sketches' ability to interact and change at run-time. We discuss these prototypes and conclude with considerations for future research using the Chalktalk platform.

Karl Toby Rosenberg, Rubaiat Habib Kazi, Li-Yi Wei et al.

We introduce DrawTalking, an approach to building and controlling interactive worlds by sketching and speaking while telling stories. It emphasizes user control and flexibility, and gives programming-like capability without requiring code. An early open-ended study with our prototype shows that the mechanics resonate and are applicable to many creative-exploratory use cases, with the potential to inspire and inform research in future natural interfaces for creative exploration and authoring.

Zhenyi He, Karl Rosenberg, Ken Perlin

Virtual Reality (VR) enables users to collaborate while exploring scenarios not realizable in the physical world. We propose CollabVR, a distributed multi-user collaboration environment, to explore how digital content improves expression and understanding of ideas among groups. To achieve this, we designed and examined three possible configurations for participants and shared manipulable objects. In configuration (1), participants stand side-by-side. In (2), participants are positioned across from each other, mirrored face-to-face. In (3), called "eyes-free," participants stand side-by-side looking at a shared display, and draw upon a horizontal surface. We also explored a "telepathy" mode, in which participants could see from each other's point of view. We implemented "3DSketch" visual objects for participants to manipulate and move between virtual content boards in the environment. To evaluate the system, we conducted a study in which four people at a time used each of the three configurations to cooperate and communicate ideas with each other. We have provided experimental results and interview responses.