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On tangible user interfaces, humans and spatiality

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Abstract

Like the prehistoric twig and stone, tangible user interfaces (TUIs) are objects manipulated by humans. Tangible user interface success will depend on how well they exploit spatiality, the intuitive spatial skills humans have with the objects they use. In this paper, we carefully examine the relationship between humans and physical objects, and related previous research. From this examination, we distill a set of observations and turn these into heuristics for incorporation of spatiality into TUI application design, a cornerstone for their success. Following this line of thought, we identify “spatial TUIs,” the subset of TUIs that mediate interaction with shape, space and structure. We then examine several existing spatial TUIs using our heuristics.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Jonathan Schaeffer, Lili Liu, Albert “Skip” Rizzo, Steve Sutphen and several anonymous reviewers for their numerous insightful comments and practical suggestions. This research was supported in part by “The 21st Century Center of Excellence Program” of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Interface Engineering Laboratory, Osaka University, Japan

    Ehud Sharlin, Yoshifumi Kitamura, Fumio Kishino & Yuichi Itoh

  2. Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University, USA

    Benjamin Watson

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  1. Ehud Sharlin
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  2. Benjamin Watson
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  3. Yoshifumi Kitamura
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  4. Fumio Kishino
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  5. Yuichi Itoh
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Correspondence to Ehud Sharlin.

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Sharlin, E., Watson, B., Kitamura, Y. et al. On tangible user interfaces, humans and spatiality. Pers Ubiquit Comput 8, 338–346 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-004-0296-5

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