Intel: Envisioning Interactions in the Home of the Future [washington.edu] highlights some recent student projects about potential future applications for the projection of interfaces on any surface suitable for display and interaction in the home. The resulting five projects envision the embedding of community networks into the home, a search, interaction across walls, lifestyle coaching, and interactive cooking.
The project "Real Ideal" (PDF) is the most visualization-focused and presents a virtual "life consultant" that utilizes wall and floor space in the house to display ambient cues relating to a person's current task or goal. The system provides "reflections through projections", highlighting and annotating parts of the house and everyday life that could be improved or changed. By taking areas where action is typically invisible and visualizing it, mundane or incomprehensible tasks such as water consumption become engaging and interactive. This idea of visualization can be applied in all of the areas of life from health, to finances, to calendars and scheduling, helping to streamline life's obligations, increase productivity and achieve goals.
The project "MPrint" (PDF) is a nice variation of the "History Tablecloth" idea, here based around the concept of showing the physical history of object . It makes use of these histories by visualizing a solution to an all too common problem: losing things. Mprint captures and leaves "a residue" underneath every object on designated surfaces. These residues are an indication that any particular object has occupied that space. Object residues become the entry point into Mprint's interface which can locate a lost object and take snapshots of surfaces so that meaningful layouts and spatial relationships can be saved and recalled later.