SLAP: Silicone Illuminated Active Peripherals. Bridging the Gap Between Virtual and Physical Controls on Tabletops
Physical user interface components such as buttons, sliders, knobs, and
keyboards have many advantages: thanks to their haptic nature, they are
easy to operate without looking, and their shape guides the user's
input gestures. However, they are often expensive, and it is hard to
change their labeling on the fly. Computer interfaces have largely
replaced these devices with virtual on-screen controls, such as push
buttons, scrollbars, rotary knobs and soft keyboards. Virtual controls
are very flexible, easily changed dynamically - but they lack the
physical, haptic texture and feedback of their real-world counterparts.
Silicone ILluminated Active Peripherals, or
SLAP widgets, are physical widgets made from silicone rubber and
acrylic that combine the advantages of physical and virtual devices:
SLAP buttons, sliders, knobs and keyboards have the physical shape
of real devices to provide the right haptic feedback, but are still
easily relabeled using a tabletop rear projection. At the same time,
they are particularly low-cost, and easy to put to use.
May 9th is 
QR (quick response) codes are two-dimensional bar
codes which link online and physical graphics to websites and
multi-media. Most of the time, the codes look more or less the same:
abstract look and black.
MAP-it by Liesbeth Huybrechts & Thomas Laureyssens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Belgium License. Based on a work at map-it.be.