Ceiling Interaction: Properties, Usage Scenarios, and a Prototype

We propose utilizing the ceiling of personal and office spaces as an additional interactive display for both single-user applications and collaboration. Ceilings offer a display space that is unobtrusive, allows unobstructed viewing from many positions, and allows direct mapping to the room below. Previous research on ceilings as interactive displays has focused on providing ambient information. We argue that interactive ceilings are even better suited for supporting collaboration between persons in a shared room, and as an unobtrusive extension of a user’s desktop. Also, interactive ceilings can display status information directly above persons or objects on the floor. We discuss perceptual and ergonomic properties of interactive ceilings, propose concrete applications that benefit from interactive ceilings, describe a rear-projected prototype that we built with a size of 1.82 x 1.02 m, and present the design of a study investigating perceptual limitations of interactive ceilings.