Construction of a Low-Cost Layered Interactive Dashboard with Capacitive Sensing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors proposed an interactive layered dashboard with a capacitive touch sensor, and the work seems significant to the research community. I hope the below tips may improve the present work.

My comments are as follows:

1. Some figures are poor, like 2,3,4, 14, 16,17. Readers can not easily read it.
2. Also, insert section motivation and contribution with a significant research diagram to clear the paper's main aim.
3. Please also write the limitation of the study in the last section.
4. Minor typos and writing bugs can be solved.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. In the revised manuscript all the figures were replaced entirely and substituted with better resolution images, so we believe that this issue is resolved. The Introduction section as well as the Conclusions section were revised according to the reviewer’s suggestion. We believe that now the motivation and contributions, the aim as well as the limitations of this study are better highlighted. Finally, in the revised manuscript we corrected minor typos and writing bugs, while many sentences were rephrased to better reveal their conceptual content.   

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors present a readable overview of capacitive sensing, but this well known. We have the following comment

1.The authors made a design of a dashboard using primitive material. The question is if this is a topic for a scientific paper. Most universities use their smart boards for many years, so from the usability aspect we were wondering what are the innovative aspects

2. The authors mention three applications music instruments, alphabet etc. Again we were wondering what are innovative aspects, many children toys offer the same functionality. Were wondering about the system after the user interface, for example how is language learning using the alphabet application supported.

3. We miss a usability test and user satisfaction test. and also an evaluation of the proposed methodology for example by questionnaires.

4. Our impression is that the paper should be submitted to a didactic, learning Journal

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. However, please consider that our paper can be better described to be one that follows an engineering approach and not scientific research one. In specific, the paper attempts to address the following engineering questions:

• Is it feasible to construct an interactive dashboard by using everyday materials?
• Is it possible for this interactive construction to be made multifunctional so different layers of information are projected over the dashboard?
• Is it possible for this development to operate reliably and be robust for use in a public space?
• Is it possible this construction to be content agnostic so several use cases can be accommodated over the same dashboard?

 

Thus, the main motivation of the present work (that is incorporated also in the Introduction section of the revised manuscript) can be summarized in the previous research questions.

Please also consider that the applications and use case shown in this work are simple indicative examples of the many different scenarios that can be projected and showed on the dashboard. This is exactly our difference from corresponding toys for children, that is the capability of our construction to accommodate several different use cases over the same interactive surface. The separation of the projected content from the underlying physical construction enables us to use the same surface with several different uses, simply altering the content.

We revert once more to highlight the fact that our approach can be considered an engineering one and not a pedagogical one, so we believe that it is now clear that the manuscript is not aimed to be submitted in a didactic/learning journal, since it is targeted to an engineering audience. Moreover, since this paper was submitted in an engineering journal, our performed evaluation contains methods for evaluating engineering issues like stress test, robustness test, concurrency test and not a usability and user satisfaction test and method of evaluation of the proposed methodology using tools like questionnaires.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript describes the touch interface the authors have developed with focus on technical implementation so that it can help others develop similar prototypes.

The manuscript reports some evaluation of some of the potential materials to build a capacitive touch interface. These include graphite (from a pen), and aluminium foil tape. 

Language is good, there is no need for extensive language editing. However, in places the text could perhaps be a bit more straightforward. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. In the revised manuscript the Introduction section as well as the Conclusions section were revised. We believe that now the motivation and contributions, the aim as well as the limitations of this study are better highlighted. Finally, in the revised manuscript we corrected minor typos and writing bugs, while many sentences were rephrased to better reveal their conceptual content. We believe that now the text is more straightforward.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your replay to my comment and changes made to the manuscript.

Nevertheless to my opinion a paper based on an engineering approach published in a scientific Journal should satisfy the basic scientific rules.

If daily material is used i am interested to know what is the quality of the designed system, is it comparable to a system made with professional tools and has the system been tested?

A system based on an engineering approached should be used and tested, the question is if a user test has been done and user satisfaction has been assessed?

Author Response

Thank you once more for your valuable comments. As per your kind suggestions, we added a new very short subsection (4.2.5), together with a new figure 29, that includes a quick comparison of our sensors with a commercial 3.5” Touch screen, just to show the concept of a relative comparison (touch sensor comparison) with a commercial product made with professional tools. We again highlight the aim of this work, that is by using simple low-cost materials in combination with open-source software tools, one can build a primitive but multi-functional interactive surface for several use cases. Of course, such a simplified construction cannot be considered equal to a professional interactive whiteboard. The latter usually exposes to users a touch surface that can be used as a giant tablet for running apps or browsing to the internet. Surely, it is not our intention to create such a product. Our interactive surface is dedicated to specific applications due to the static placement of sensors over the surface, but its very low cost can make this easily reproducible for use cases that need different placement of the sensors and ideal for public spaces as an information kiosk, since it can afford damages without a financial pain for the owner. As it is described in section 4.2, an operational evaluation of our proof-of-concept is given. But except from our performed evaluation, we have performed many example demonstrations and use by others (a simplified example is mentioned in the text that refers to tests during the visits of various schools in our university). The comments received from them are very positive not only for the attractiveness and the simplicity of this construction but also for its performance. But their acceptance has not been quantified via questionnaires if your question concerns this. It was not our aim to provide such a technology acceptance measurement since our development is not intended for commercial exploitation.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript documents the construction of a prototype interface of a custom touch screen. The selection of materials is carefully documented so that it enables others to build custom touch sensitive interfaces using the same approach. There is nothing too novel in the approach but the way it is documented here can be valuable. 

The focus is unfortunately not too sharp: the manuscript discusses things in great length, which the content doesn't really justify. However, as the form of the submission is acceptable, I think the manuscript can be published. 

Author Response

Thank you again for your valuable comments and kind suggestions. We agree with you that in some points we could have discussed the content in a shorter length, but we finally decided not to cut any material because we feel it gives some advantages to the reading flow. Nevertheless, thank you very much again for proposing our manuscript for publication.