a collection of physical interfaces for collaborative interaction that can be situated in a real-world setting & are designed for particular collaborative contexts & uses. one can also consider this to be a huge collection of working prototypes for ambient information display, including examples such as: physical flowers that bloom or funny eyes that change according to the 'status' of people (present, absent, busy, ...), picture frames that light up & magic puppets that move to show that a remote person is in one's thoughts, falling marbles that display the amount of unread emails & missed calls, & a glowing flower that creates patterns of sounds & lights that children should repeat.
most of the prototypes were developed with phidgets, physical widgets that makes prototyping physical user interfaces easy. [ucalgary.ca (pdf) & ucalgary.ca] (continue reading for more pictures)