Tangible Interaction and a Hello

Welcome. In this blog I will talk about human computer interaction. Most of the posts will be about Tangible User Interfaces or TUIs. The majority of my posts impressions but hopefully I will have some code to post and a project or two to walk you through. Enjoy.

-Courtland

A clarification before we start...

One of the pioneers in Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Hiroshi Ishii, explained the benefits of tangible interaction this way...

People have developed sophisticated skills for sensing and manipulating the physical environment. This myriad of skills is not employed when interacting with traditional Graphical User Interface (GUI) systems. The goal of tangible computing is to allow the user to implement their intrinsic "physical" skills by giving physical form to digital information.

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) employ physical objects, surfaces, and spaces as tangible embodiments of digital information. This ranges from graspable objects and augmented surfaces, which allow users to employ their tactile system and their sense of kinesthesia, to "ambient media" light, sound, airflow, and water movement, which engage a users sense of activity and peripheral awareness.

The idea is simply to take advantage of the richness of multimodal human senses and skills developed through our lifetime of interaction with the physical world.

tangible media lab