Paper Reading #20: iSlideshow: a Content-Aware Slideshow System

Commentary

See what I have to say about ___'s and ___'s work.

References

Chen, J., Xiao, J., and Yuli, G. (2010). islideshow: a content-aware slideshow system. Proceeding of the Acm conference on intelligent user interfaces. Hong Kong: http://www.iuiconf.org/

Article Summary

This paper details a presentation system that groups and transitions based on content rather than on by some arbitrarily defined effect. Content-based grouping allows the system to create one larger image from multiple smaller images that are seamlessly tiled together. The researchers implement a comparison algorithm that ensures a good flow of color and content from the edge of one image to another, building the entire scene iteratively:

Image courtesy of the above-cited article.

The researchers also use facial recognition to generate transitions that are relevant to the scene. Once photos are grouped by similar content with respect to facial recognition, transitions take into account the positions of faces between various photos in the group and build transitions based on those locations.

The results of a user study conducted by the researchers show that their user base enjoyed using their system more than others based on aesthetic appeal and fun. Several users mentioned that the slideshows seemed more meaningful with the content-aware transitions.

Discussion

I feel like this is a pretty innovative use of a content-aware system for manipulating photos and such. The fact that it was so well received by the users included in the study leads me to believe that this type of system would be very successful in a mainstream market. I personally would like to try it out! I feel like the current success of arbitrary transition effects and vanilla slideshow presentations is due largely in part to the fact that they are just so easy to implement, and any of the more impressive effects, like the onces detailed in this article, are viewed as being too difficult for anything but a Photoshop poweruser or something similar. I'm glad to see the steps that these researchers took with respect to interface design and making the creation of aesthetically pleasing presentations fun and exciting.