Reading #26: Picturephone: A Game for Sketch Data Capture (2009)

by Gabe Johnson

Comments: Chris

This paper talks about Picturephone, a sketching game that was mentioned in a previous paper. Picturephone is a game inspired by the telephone children's game in which a message is passed down a line of people by whispering one person at a time. The message usually changes drastically and in some cases can wind up being totally different from the original message.

For example, the original message might be, "Marty took a drink of water," and after one pass might change to "Marty drank some water." Eventually it might become "Marty took a drink of soda" and inevitably will become "Marty was arrested for arson while not wearing pants" after one or two more passes.

Picturephone has the first user sketch the story. The second person then creates a new story based on the sketch. A third person then sketches the new story, and a third player sketches this story. The sketches are then compared and graded somehow. The sketches are also labeled in the process.

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This looks fun. I would like to play it. Who wants to play it with me? I would like to see what would happen if the sketch/story was repeated 20 times.

Reading #25: A descriptor for large scale image retrieval based on sketched feature lines (2009)

by mathias Eitz, Kristian Hildebrand, Tamy Boubekeur, Marc Alexa

Comments: Francisco

This paper deals with sketched based image search, in which the images to be searched for are sketched by the user. The authors use a few asymmetric descriptors that match the main features of a stroke with objects in the images. They tested with a set of 1.5 million pictures of outdoor sceneries. They tested 27 sketches, and the results look similar to the queries. They illustrate several example sketches and top results.

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I have thought about searching using sketch queries. We don't even have image search (where we input a normal image, not even a sketch) widely available. Hopefully that area and sketch searching will become widespread soon, as it is very useful.

Reading #24: Games For Sketch Data Collection (2009)

by Gabe Johnson and Ellen Yi-Luen Do

Comments: Chris

This paper discusses the use of games to collect data, specifically for sketch. The authors wish to understand "how people make and describe hand-made drawings." The paper describes two games: Picturephone (like the telephone game) and Stellasketch. Picturephone gives a description of a sketch for player 1 to draw, and player 2 must then describe the sketch that player 1 drew. More players can then draw the sketch based on player 2's text instead of the original text. This is fun. Stellasketch is like Pictionary. One player draws something based on a clue, and other players privately label the sketch. The point of using the games is to hopefully collect much more data for sketch research than the typical handful of users.

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This is a cool idea. I actually want to play these games right now (I want to be in a user study). This is a very cool, free way to reward users for taking the study. Work is nice if it doesn't feel like work.