the ci counter, with the intelligent display on the right; photograph by joseph kaye


CounterACTIVE
Wendy Ju, Camilo Guaqueta, Becky Hurwitz, Tilke Judd, Bonny Lee

Why stand by and have a kitchen of the future that cook for you when you can join in on the fun? CounterACTIVE is developing a kitchen counter which engages the user with delicious recipes, colorful pictures, fun music, instructive videos and interesting stories. By enticing people to develop their cooking skills, our interface encourages an active participation in the kitchen.

The CounterACTIVE research has two components: the interface and the underlying architecture. The interface is composed of a computer, an overhead projector, and Rehmi Post's TauFish electric field sensing array; by touching the pictures and words on the countertop, users' can step their way through recipes. We are currently exploring the design possibilites offered by this setup, which we regard as a new medium.

Another aspect of our research is the architecture of an event detection system to enable a non-command interface. Using an underlying array of sensors distributed throughout the kitchen the kitchen can inferr what events are occuring in the kitchen and respond before the user formulates an explicit command.