Autonomous behaviour in tangible user interfaces as a design factor

PhD ThesisThis thesis critically explores the design space of autonomous and actuated artefacts, considering how autonomous behaviours in interactive technologies might shape and influence users’ interactions and behaviours. Since the invention of gearing and clockwork, mechanical devices were built that both fascinate and intrigue people through their mechanical actuation. There seems to be something magical about moving devices, which draws our attention and piques our interest. Progress in the development of computational hardware is allowing increasingly complex commercial products to be available to broad consumer-markets. New technologies emerge very fast, ranging from personal devices with strong computational power to diverse user interfaces, like multi-touch surfaces or gestural input devices. Electronic systems are becoming smaller and smarter, as they comprise sensing, controlling and actuation. From this, new opportunities arise in integrating more sensors and technology in physical objects. These trends raise some specific questions around the impacts smarter systems might have on people and interaction: how do people perceive smart systems that are tangible and what implications does this perception have for user interface design? Which design opportunities are opened up through smart systems? There is a tendency in humans to attribute life-like qualities onto non-animate objects, which evokes social behaviour towards technology. Maybe it would be possible to build user interfaces that utilise such behaviours to motivate people towards frequent use, or even motivate them to build relationships in which the users care for their devices. Their aim is not to increase the efficiency of user interfaces, but to create interfaces that are more engaging to interact with and excite people to bond with these tangible objects. This thesis sets out to explore autonomous behaviours in physical interfaces. More specifically, I am interested in the factors that make a user interpret an interface as autonomous. Through a review of literature concerned with animated objects, autonomous technology and robots, I have mapped out a design space exploring the factors that are important in developing autonomous interfaces. Building on this and utilising workshops conducted with other researchers, I have vi developed a framework that identifies key elements for the design of Tangible Autonomous Interfaces (TAIs). To validate the dimensions of this framework and to further unpack the impacts on users of interacting with autonomous interfaces I have adopted a ‘research through design’ approach. I have iteratively designed and realised a series of autonomous, interactive prototypes, which demonstrate the potential of such interfaces to establish themselves as social entities. Through two deeper case studies, consisting of an actuated helium balloon and desktop lamp, I provide insights into how autonomy could be implemented into Tangible User Interfaces. My studies revealed that through their autonomous behaviour (guided by the framework) these devices established themselves, in interaction, as social entities. They furthermore turned out to be acceptable, especially if people were able to find a purpose for them in their lives. This thesis closes with a discussion of findings and provides specific implications for design of autonomous behaviour in interfaces

Tangible interfaces for manipulating aggregates of digital information

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-269).This thesis develops new approaches for people to physically represent and interact with aggregates of digital information. These support the concept of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs), a genre of human-computer interaction that uses spatially reconfigurable physical objects as representations and controls for digital information. The thesis supports the manipulation of information aggregates through systems of physical tokens and constraints. In these interfaces, physical tokens act as containers and parameters for referencing digital information elements and aggregates. Physical constraints are then used to map structured compositions of tokens onto a variety of computational interpretations. This approach is supported through the design and implementation of several systems. The mediaBlocks system enables people to use physical blocks to "copy and paste" digital media between specialized devices and general-purpose computers, and to physically compose and edit this content (e.g., to build multimedia presentations). This system also contributes new tangible interface techniques for binding, aggregating, and disaggregating sequences of digital information into physical objects.(cont.) Tangible query interfaces allow people to physically express and manipulate database queries. This system demonstrates ways in which tangible interfaces can manipulate larger aggregates of information. One of these query approaches has been evaluated in a user study, which has compared favorably with a best-practice graphical interface alternative. These projects are used to support the claim that physically constrained tokens can provide an effective approach for interacting with aggregates of digital information.by Brygg Anders Ullmer.Ph.D

Playful E-textile Sonic Interaction for Socially Engaged and Open-Ended Play Between Autistic Children

Research on the potential benefits of technology for autistic children is an emergent field in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), especially within the Child-Computer Interaction Community. This thesis contributes a design approach grounded in theories of play, cognitive development, and autism to expand the discourse on methodological guidelines for performing empirical studies with non-verbal autistic children and to extend the design space to cater to the socio-emotional and sensory needs of this population. The thesis reveals how sonic e-textile Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) can be used effectively to mediate children’s social participation in playful activities. This is demonstrated through developing three explorative field-studies conducted at a specialist school based in North-East London where two sonic e-textile playful TUIs, namely Mazi and Olly, have been created and tested with three groups of autistic children aged between 5-10. The three studies ran over the period of three years and were designed to investigate the potentials of TUIs as shareable toys during leisure and recreational activities to a) support social and playful interactions among peers and b) provide opportunities for self-regulation. The key contributions of this thesis are the designs of two tangible user interfaces, which offer a set of design approaches to guide researchers through creating shareable and playful tangibles for non-verbal autistic children; a framework for analysis and a thorough evaluation process that other researchers could use to assess the efficacy of playful TUI designs for nonverbal autistic children; and an in-depth discussion about the research process, which offers a new perspective about holistic designs and evaluation of technologies that aim to scaffold play in groups non-verbal autistic children

Development of actuated Tangible User Interfaces: new interaction concepts and evaluation methods

Riedenklau E. Development of actuated Tangible User Interfaces: new interaction concepts and evaluation methods. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2016.Making information understandable and literally graspable is the main goal of tangible interaction research. By giving digital data physical representations (Tangible User Interface Objects, or TUIOs), they can be used and manipulated like everyday objects with the users’ natural manipulation skills. Such physical interaction is basically of uni-directional kind, directed from the user to the system, limiting the possible interaction patterns. In other words, the system has no means to actively support the physical interaction. Within the frame of tabletop tangible user interfaces, this problem was addressed by the introduction of actuated TUIOs, that are controllable by the system. Within the frame of this thesis, we present the development of our own actuated TUIOs and address multiple interaction concepts we identified as research gaps in literature on actuated Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs). Gestural interaction is a natural means for humans to non-verbally communicate using their hands. TUIs should be able to support gestural interaction, since our hands are already heavily involved in the interaction. This has rarely been investigated in literature. For a tangible social network client application, we investigate two methods for collecting user-defined gestures that our system should be able to interpret for triggering actions. Versatile systems often understand a wide palette of commands. Another approach for triggering actions is the use of menus. We explore the design space of menu metaphors used in TUIs and present our own actuated dial-based approach. Rich interaction modalities may support the understandability of the represented data and make the interaction with them more appealing, but also mean high demands on real-time precessing. We highlight new research directions for integrated feature rich and multi-modal interaction, such as graphical display, sound output, tactile feedback, our actuated menu and automatically maintained relations between actuated TUIOs within a remote collaboration application. We also tackle the introduction of further sophisticated measures for the evaluation of TUIs to provide further evidence to the theories on tangible interaction. We tested our enhanced measures within a comparative study. Since one of the key factors in effective manual interaction is speed, we benchmarked both the human hand’s manipulation speed and compare it with the capabilities of our own implementation of actuated TUIOs and the systems described in literature. After briefly discussing applications that lie beyond the scope of this thesis, we conclude with a collection of design guidelines gathered in the course of this work and integrate them together with our findings into a larger frame

Tangibly Reducing Sedentariness in Office Workers

It is claimed sedentariness is as much a threat to long- term health as smoking or unhealthy eating, and is not mitigated by bursts of physical activity. Desk bound office workers are particularly vulnerable to this risk, given the inherently sedentary nature of their roles. To tackle this problem in HCI, we have focused largely on smartphones apps whilst embracing a general trend towards automating data collection of behavior. We argue that placing technologies in the environment, leveraging ambient displays and Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs), can offer a more effective approach for tackling sedentary behaviors in an office environment. We include a brief design of a device we intend to use to evaluate these ideas

Tangible user interfaces : past, present and future directions

In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in or- der to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge. This paper examines the existing body of work on Tangible User In- terfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frame- works and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, phycology, and philoso- phy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limita- tions of TUIs and chart directions for future research

Serious interface design for dental health: Wiimote-based tangible interaction for school children

This paper describes a camera-based approach towards creating a tangible interface for serious games. We introduce our game for dental health targeted at school children which implements the Nintendo WiiMote as infrared camera. Paired with a gesture-recognition system, this combination allows us to apply real-world items as input devices. Thereby, the game tries to address different aspects of dental hygiene along with the improvement of children's motor skills. In our focus group test, we found that tangible interfaces offer great potential for educational purposes and can be used to engage kids in a playful learning process by addressing their childlike curiosity and fostering implicit learning