Exploring interactions with a flexible tactile device for multi-context interaction

Conference of 34th Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2016 ; Conference Date: 7 May 2016 Through 12 May 2016; Conference Code:121620International audienceThe use of touch-based interaction now dominates the market as it enables a more natural form of interaction with our devices, but is largely limited to flat and rigid surfaces. The increasing availability of flexible interactive technologies offers us the opportunity to design devices that adapt to their context of use and opens up new avenues for the design of interaction on a flexible device for 'multi-context interaction'. In this paper, we present initial work in this direction through an explorative pilot study. Interestingly, the participants were rather influenced by standard tactile input gestures and envisioned using these for interaction while taking advantage of the flexible properties of the device for adaptation instead, either to the context or the object to which the device is attached (e.g. pressure input, positioning of the device and deformation)