Waterloo’s Stacey Scott puts the importance of face-to-face discussion back on the table
by Angela Pause — Apr 3 '14
The Person: She’s the woman who is bringing the future of interactive, digital tabletops into your living room and office meeting space. Also known as Dr. Stacey Scott, Assistant Professor, Systems Design Engineering, with a cross appointment to English Language and Literature, University of Waterloo. Serial co-founder: IMMERSe; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) SurfNet, a network focused on tabletops and interactive surfaces; and LEIF: A Multicultural Exploration into Research and Education for Surface Computing, an exchange program between Canadian and European universities for students to work on surface computing research projects.
Stacey Scott,
University of Waterloo
The Project: “I am trying to build better technology for people working and socializing in a face-to-face environment. Primarily, I am interested in supporting small groups of collaborators or friends and families getting together. I focus on large screen technology, such as interactive tables and interactive walls.” As her online bio states: Her particular area of specialization is in the development of digital tabletop computer technology for supporting various face-to-face collaborative and social endeavors, including both “serious” pursuits such as military command and control and emergency response, and more “playful” pursuits such as board gaming. As a strong advocate of the potential of digital tabletop technology to support collaboration – yes even (way) before the invention of the Microsoft Surface (now PixelSense) – she is heavily involved in the interactive tabletop and surface international research and development community, as well as in the more broad communities of human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW).
The Progress: From the fringes of technology 14 years ago to the having a seat at the (digital) table, Scott has proven that her passion for an idea before its time has paid off – interactive large tabletop technology is becoming an affordable reality for the masses. Within a couple of years, living rooms will boast a 4k television, table tops will become digital game boards and colleagues will digitally swap information around a table. The future has arrived, says Scott.
What seems so strange is that many of us already assumed this technology was here – from the Hunger Games’ large-scale control room and James Bond’s multi-touch table in Quantum of Solace – to the ubiquitous iPad that even toddlers use. But, according to Scott, while her and her colleagues were inventing the software, the actual physical hardware is just now being invented. It’s not as easy as making an iPad bigger, as Scott points out that iPad technology is not scalable to a bigger surface. So Scott is focused on technology that is designed for much large surfaces. And now the hardware side is finally catching up, especially in Europe, so we can look forward to using digital tabletops at the office and in the home within a few short years, says Scott.
The Prospects: The future is golden for this type of research. Scott says with Microsoft’s recent purchase of Perceptive Pixel, they’ve become a major player in this technology area again, driving the need for the leading-edge software that Scott and her colleagues has been developing. In Canada, Smart Technologies is making strides in the hardware, but, according to Scott, Europe is where much of the hardware action is happening. This progress means commercializing Scott’s work is the next step. It’s a case of “if you build it, they will come.”
The Passion: Improving collaboration around large digital surfaces is what drives Scott. “I always saw the promise in it, but it was really hard to convince others. But now I can tell people to imagine a really large iPad that people are sitting around collaborating. Suddenly, people can imagine the possibilities, now they can picture what a future workspace will be.” They are finally catching up to Scott’s vision.
