My research is focused on applying human-centered iterative design processes to ubiquitous computing. I'm interested in rapid prototyping tools, evaluation methods, and most importantly building novel ubiquitous computing applications and services that address real human problems.
NY Times 2008/04/09: My Life as a Video Game
R. Ballagas, A. Kuntze, and S. P. Walz. Gaming Tourism: Lessons from Evaluating REXplorer, a Pervasive Game for Tourists. In Pervasive ’08: To appear in Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Pervasive Computing. LNCS, Springer, 2008.
Rafael Ballagas and Steffen Walz. REXplorer: Using iterative design techniques for pervasive games. In Carsten Magerkurth and Carsten Röcker, editors, Pervasive Gaming Applications - A Reader for Pervasive Gaming Research, volume 2. Shaker Verlag, 2007.
Rafael Ballagas, Michael Rohs, Jennifer Sheridan, and Jan Borchers. The Design Space of Mobile Phone Input Techniques for Ubiquitous Computing. In Joanna Lumsden, editor, Handbook of Research on User Interface Design and Evaluation for Mobile Technologies (To appear). IGI Global, Hershey, PA, USA, 2008.
Sven Kratz and Rafael Ballagas. Gesture Recognition Using Motion Estimation on Mobile Phones. In PERMID '07. 3rd Intl. Workshop on Pervasive Mobile Interaction Devices at Pervasive 2007., 2007.
Rafael Ballagas, Steffen P. Walz, Sven Kratz, Claudia Fuhr, Eugen Yu, Martin Tann, Jan Borchers, and Ludger Hovestadt. REXplorer: A Mobile, Pervasive Spell-Casting Game for Tourists. In CHI '07: Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pages 1929-1934, New York, NY, USA, 2007. ACM Press.
Rafael Ballagas, Faraz Memon, Rene Reiners, and Jan Borchers. iStuff Mobile: Rapidly Prototyping New Mobile Phone Interfaces for Ubiquitous Computing. In CHI '07: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pages 1107-1116, New York, NY, USA, 2007. ACM Press.
Steffen P. Walz, Rafael Ballagas, Jan Borchers, Joel Mendoza, Sven Kratz, Christoph Wartmann, Claudia Fuhr, Martin J. Tann, Dong Youn Shin, Bilal Hameed, Laszlo Bardos, and Ludger Hovestadt. Cell Spell-Casting: Designing a Locative and Gesture Recognition Multiplayer Smartphone Game for Tourists. In Proc. PERGAMES, Third International Workshop on Pervasive Gaming Applications at PERVASIVE 2006, Dublin, Ireland, May 2006. LNCS.
Rafael Ballagas, Faraz Memon, Rene Reiners, and Jan Borchers. iStuff Mobile: prototyping interactions for mobile phones in interactive spaces. In Proc. PERMID, Workshop on Pervasive Mobile Interaction Devices at PERVASIVE 2006, Dublin, Ireland, 2006. LNCS.
Rafael Ballagas, Steffen Walz, and Jan Borchers. REXplorer: A Pervasive Spell-Casting Game for Tourists as Social Software. In CHI 2006 Workshop on Mobile Social Software (MoSoSo), April 2006.
Rafael Ballagas, Michael Rohs, Jennifer Sheridan, and Jan Borchers. The Smart Phone: A Ubiquitous Input Device. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 5(1):70-77, Jan-Mar 2006. .
Trevor Pering, Rafael Ballagas, and Roy Want. Spontaneous marriages of mobile devices and interactive spaces. Commun. ACM, 48(9):53-59, 2005.
Rafael Ballagas and Jan Borchers. REXplorer: A mobile, pervasive game for tourists. In ECSCW Workshop on Computer Games & CSCW, September 2005.
Rafael Ballagas, Michael Rohs, and Jennifer Sheridan. Mobile Phones as Pointing Devices. In Pervasive 2005 Workshop on Pervasive Mobile Interaction Devices (PERMID), Munich, Germany, May 2005.
Rafael Ballagas, Michael Rohs, Jennifer Sheridan, and Jan Borchers. Sweep and Point & Shoot: Phonecam-Based Interactions for Large Public Displays. In CHI '05: CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, pages 1200-1203, New York, NY, USA, April 2005. ACM Press.
Rafael Ballagas. Patch Panel: Distributed I/O Management for Ubicomp. In UBICOMP Doctoral Colloquium, Nottingham, UK, September 2004.
Rafael Ballagas, Andy Szybalski, and Armando Fox. Patch Panel: Enabling Control-Flow Interoperability in Ubicomp Environments. In PerCom 2004 Second IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, Orlando, Florida, USA, March 2004.
Brian Lee, Rafael Ballagas, and Maureen Stone. Designing for Latency: In Search of the Balance Between System Flexibility and Responsiveness. In Ubicomp 2003, Seattle, Washington, USA, October 2003. Workshop position paper for ''At the Crossroads: The Interaction of HCI and Systems Issues in UbiComp''
Rafael Ballagas, Meredith Ringel, Maureen Stone, and Jan Borchers. iStuff: A Physical User Interface Toolkit for Ubiquitous Computing Environments. In Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2003 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pages 537-544, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, April 2003.
Meredith Ringel, Joshua Tyler, Maureen Stone, Rafael Ballagas, and Jan Borchers. iStuff: A Scalable Architecture for Lightweight, Wireless Devices for Ubicomp User Interfaces. In Ubicomp 2002, September 2002.
Jan Borchers, Rafael Ballagas, and Maureen Stone. iStuff: Searching for the Great Unified Input Theory. In UBICOMP 2002: Ubiquitous Computing, September 2002.
