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Designing the user actions in tangible interaction

Published: 20 August 2005 Publication History

Abstract

The aim of this paper is firstly to characterize the richness of human actions, based on observations of skilled practice in industrial environments, as opposed to actions in office contexts. Secondly, it is to introduce techniques that may help designers explore and support the richness of human actions in the design of future tangible user interfaces. Currently, the actions required by electronic products tend to be limited to pushing, sliding and rotating. This is a stark contrast to what we have observed in industry and daily life, namely that human actions are far more complex and subtle, and human dexterity is highly refined. Beginning with an analysis of the everyday work of brewery operators and drawing analytical insights from anthropology, we recognize three fundamental characteristics of actions in industrial practice: they are situated, skilled and unfold temporally and spatially. This forms the foundation for our move towards design. Through facilitating a series of projects with students, we have explored a range of design methods that aim to make the many characteristics and qualities of skilled practice available as a resource to designers of tangible interfaces. In this regard we introduce historical interaction styles, video wall analysis, hands-only scenarios, tangible interaction sketches and interaction mobiles as design methods that attempt to capture the richness and quality of human actions.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    CC '05: Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing: between sense and sensibility
    August 2005
    218 pages
    ISBN:1595932038
    DOI:10.1145/1094562
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 20 August 2005

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    Author Tags

    1. anthropology
    2. design methods
    3. human actions
    4. scenarios
    5. tangible interaction
    6. use context

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    View all
    • (2024)The Body in Play: Dimensions of Embodiment in Design for PlayProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633379(1-12)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
    • (2024)Reconfigurable Interfaces by Shape Change and Embedded MagnetsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642802(1-12)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2023)A Design Vocabulary for Data PhysicalizationACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/361736631:1(1-62)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2023
    • (2022)Designing for Inaccessible Emergency Medical Service Contexts: Development and Evaluation of the Contextual Secondary Video ToolkitProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517538(1-17)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
    • (2022)Development History and Concept Analysis of Tangible Interaction DesignHCI International 2022 - Late Breaking Papers. Design, User Experience and Interaction10.1007/978-3-031-17615-9_6(82-96)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2022
    • (2021)Methodology for Designing Systems Based on Tangible User Interfaces and Gamification Techniques for Blind PeopleApplied Sciences10.3390/app1112567611:12(5676)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2021
    • (2018)Designing for Embodied Being-in-the-World: A Critical Analysis of the Concept of Embodiment in the Design of HybridsMultimodal Technologies and Interaction10.3390/mti20100072:1(7)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2018
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    • (2016)Merging Digital and Physical: Tangible InteractionsDynamic Products10.1007/978-3-319-33117-1_2(21-30)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2016
    • (2014)A First Approach to Understanding and Measuring Naturalness in Driver-Car InteractionProceedings of the 6th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications10.1145/2667317.2667416(1-10)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2014
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