Sophisticated user interfaces are now technologically possible as we have moved from mouse and joystick to the stylus for the Palm, the trackwheel of the iPod, the touchscreen of the iPhone, the gesture recognition of Wii applications and immersive environments like the CAVE. The new frontier in user interfaces and interaction is that of mixed-reality applications which allow many different modes of interaction with the real and virtual worlds, and allow novel kinds of feedback from real to virtual and virtual to real. This project develops components and tools to build software components that will enable application designers to express their creativity without getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty detail of handling a variety of different input and output devices. This will enable a transformation not only in software but the way that software will be used. The tools will be evaluated by end users of the mixed reality applications and the designers for their ability to enhance creativity. More broadly, these tools will lead to new forms of communicating ideas, user interaction and collaboration. Additional impact will be achieved by broad dissemination of the research results, the open-source distribution of the tools developed by the project, and the involvement in the research of students from a broad range of economic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
