Hover acts as a low-cost, low-bandwidth that is used while talking on the phone. It provides visual awareness of remote persons in the form of an abstract physical representation with several affordances: a real-time indication of the level of physical activity of the remote person. It is connected to a computer and telephone or an Internet phone. The user places multicolored balls representing persons with whom she frequently communicates (e.g. family and friends) on a stand on the Hover platform. The user takes a ball representing the other person and puts it on the top of the ramp. The ball is sensed, then rolls down and stays at the foot of the ramp. The number is then dialed automatically. On the other person’s end, the ball that represents the person who is calling starts floating when the call comes in. If this person wants to pick up the call, he/she grabs the ball and puts it on the ramp. The ball rolls across a sensor on the ramp, sending a signal to indicate that he/she answered the call. At the foot of the ramp, an air stream levitates the ball. As someone speaks, the other one sees the ball floating up and down in correspondence with the remote partner’s movements.
interactive flash demo:
http://www.monzy.org/hover/hover.swf
Source: Maynes-Aminzade, D., Tan, B.-K., Goulding, K., and Vaucelle, C. 2002. Hover. In ACM SIGGRAPH Conference Abstracts and Applications (SIGGRAPH’02). ACM Press, 194.
http://www.monzy.org/hover/
