Trajectories and the Extended User Experience

An emerging generation of artists is creating new forms of interactive experience that combine real and virtual worlds, and digital content with live action. I will draw on examples of these ‘mixed reality performances’ to illustrate the idea of the extended user experience that spans multiple real and virtual spaces, timescales, roles and interfaces. I will show how such experiences can be described in terms of interleaved trajectories. While initially grounded in examples from performance art, I will argue that this concept of trajectories can help us design all manner of cultural experiences from visiting museums, to playing games, to enjoying a day in a theme park, and may even provide a basis for designing all kinds of mobile and interactive services.

Speaker Details

Steve Benford is Professor of Collaborative Computing in the Mixed Reality Laboratory at Nottingham where he explores new technologies to support creativity. He is Directing the EPSRC funded Doctoral Training Centre in Ubiquitous Computing for the Digital Economy, leading the EPSRC Platform grant in the Widespread Adoption of Ubiquitous Computing, and is also Head of the School of the Computer Science. He received best paper awards at CHI 2005, CHI 2009 and CHI 2011, won the 2003 Prix Ars Elctronica for Interactive Art, the 2007 Nokia Mindtrek award for innovative applications of ubiquitous computing, and has received four BAFTA nominations. He has co-authored the book ‘Performing Mixed Reality’, published by MIT Press in 2011. He has recently been awarded a two year Dream Fellowship by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Series:
Microsoft Research Talks
Date:
Speakers:
Steve Benford
Affiliation:
Collaborative Computing in the Mixed Reality Laboratory at Nottingham

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Series: Microsoft Research Talks