Since our conversation yesterday at lunch, I've been getting excited by the thought of a research gallery with links from paper to the computer.
Here's the current thinking on how this might work.
You write your email about your prototype, and you cc ****************. (This might be a member of our mailing list, if we make one for ourselves.)
A default label design is shown, using information extracted from the most recent email (probably yours). You can scroll back in the mail archive and choose a different message if you like.
If you want to change the image or text, you can do so by selecting parts of the email -- a bit like Hyperopia, except with our mail archive instead of wikipedia, and a label printer instead of a receipt printer. If the default design is good, all you have to do is hit the "Add" button
After you click the button, a label prints out from the printer, and you can stick it on the next available slot on the hanging posterboard.
When browsing the gallery, you can point to any label using the laser pointer. This will bring up, on the computer station, whatever the label links to, as well as the email conversation adjacent. You can now interact with the prototype (or look at it, if it's an image or movie), and scroll through the conversation context.
Meanwhile, in the gallery, the currently-selected label is highlighted in white, and related labels (on the same email thread, for example) are highlighted in yellow.
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Some thoughts --
I'd like the gallery to be in the person's peripheral vision as they look at the computer station, but I also don't want the computer screen to be behind them as they browse the gallery. Above, the screen is at a 45-degree angle to the poster, which sort of works. RMO's computer screen and receipt wall seem to work better together, but I don't understand why.
Each poster board has 100 slots (10x10), which might take us a couple months to fill. As we fill up boards, we can add more to the left, and eventually add a second computer station at the left end. And eventually have them pull-down from the ceiling (but not at first, if it complicates the camera registration).
How to interact with the label? We can augment the boards (capacitive sensors, pressure sensors, switches, a wire grid...), or we can augment the room (camera in the ceiling). We can touch the label directly, or we can interact via an instrument (laser pointer, handheld camera...). All have advantages and disadvantages. The above sketch uses camera-in-the-ceiling and laser-pointer, but that's not necessarily the best thing to do.
There are a number of components to this system (web apps, backend stuff, camera processing, etc.) and for anyone who's interested, this might make for a fun group project.
I'd like to feature this as one of the "Escaping the Tiny Rectangle" demos (as well as being day-to-day useful for us).