Move, hold and touch: A framework for Tangible gesture interactive systems

© 2015 by the authors. Technology is spreading in our everyday world, and digital interaction beyond the screen, with real objects, allows taking advantage of our natural manipulative and communicative skills. Tangible gesture interaction takes advantage of these skills by bridging two popular domains in Human-Computer Interaction, tangible interaction and gestural interaction. In this paper, we present the Tangible Gesture Interaction Framework (TGIF) for classifying and guiding works in this field. We propose a classification of gestures according to three relationships with objects: move, hold and touch. Following this classification, we analyzed previous work in the literature to obtain guidelines and common practices for designing and building new tangible gesture interactive systems. We describe four interactive systems as application examples of the TGIF guidelines and we discuss the descriptive, evaluative and generative power of TGIF

Tangible meets gestural: Comparing and blending post-WIMP interaction paradigms

More and more objects of our everyday environment are becoming smart and connected, offering us new interaction possibilities. Tangible interaction and gestural interaction are promising communication means with these objects in this post-WIMP interaction era. Although based on different principles, they both exploit our body awareness and our skills to provide a richer and more intuitive interaction. Occasionally, when user gestures involve physical artifacts, tangible interaction and gestural interaction can blend into a new paradigm, i.e., tangible gesture interaction [5]. This workshop fosters the comparison among these different interaction paradigms and offers a unique opportunity to discuss their analogies and differences, as well as the definitions, boundaries, strengths, application domains and perspectives of tangible gesture interaction. Participants from different backgrounds are invited

Third workshop on full-body and multisensory experience

The workshop on "Full-Body and Multisensory Experience" aims at discussing the rich possibilities that the body offers to experience the external world and the prospects that arise for interaction designers when these often-neglected abilities are taken into account. In particular, the workshop will focus on the rediscovery of the human senses, either alone or in a multimodal combination, and of the perceptual-motor abilities of our body. The one-day workshop is divided in three steps: first phase is for the generation of ideas on multisensory interfaces, in the second phase, participants will have the possibilities to explore and rediscover their sensorimotor abilities through several exercises and games; in the third and last phase, there will be a further creative session in order to evaluate how the full body and multisensory activities have fostered people's creative processes. The aim of the whole experience is twofold: first, inspiring participants in designing novel concepts for multisensory interfaces; second, providing a preliminary study on the effect of these exercises in fostering creativity and supporting the design process of multisensory interfaces

Co-designing an Embodied e-Coach With Older Adults: The Tangible Coach Journey

This article describes a tangible interface for an e-coach, co-designed in four countries to meet older adults' needs and expectations. The aim of this device is to coach the user by giving recommendations, personalized tasks and to build empathy through vocal, visual, and physical interaction. Through our co-design process, we collected insights that helped identifying requirements for the physical design, the interaction design and the privacy and data control. In the first phase, we collected users' needs and expectations through several workshops. Requirements were then transformed into three design concepts that were rated and commented by our target users. The final design was implemented and tested in three countries. We discussed the results and the open challenges for the design of physical e-coaches for older adults. To encourage further developments in this field, we released the research outputs of this design process in an open-source repository

Internet of Tangible Things: Workshop on Tangible Interaction with the Internet of Things

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) brings abundant new opportunities to create more effective and pleasing tangible user interfaces that capitalize on intuitive interaction in the physical world, whilst utilizing capabilities of sensed data and Internet connectivity. However, with these new opportunities come new challenges; little is still known how to best design tangible IoT interfaces that simultaneously provide engaging user experiences and foster a sense of understanding about the often-complex functionality of IoT systems. How should we map previous taxonomies and design principles for tangible interaction into the new landscape of IoT systems? This workshop will bring together a community of researchers from the fields of IoT and tangible interaction, in order to explore and discuss how parallels between tangible interaction and the properties of IoT systems can best be capitalised on as HCI research moves increasingly toward the Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT). Through ideation and discussion, the workshop will function as a springboard for the community to begin creating new taxonomies and design considerations for the emerging IoTT

Combination therapy in hypertension: An update

Meticulous control of blood pressure is required in patients with hypertension to produce the maximum reduction in clinical cardiovascular end points, especially in patients with comorbidities like diabetes mellitus where more aggressive blood pressure lowering might be beneficial. Recent clinical trials suggest that the approach of using monotherapy for the control of hypertension is not likely to be successful in most patients. Combination therapy may be theoretically favored by the fact that multiple factors contribute to hypertension, and achieving control of blood pressure with single agent acting through one particular mechanism may not be possible. Regimens can either be fixed dose combinations or drugs added sequentially one after other. Combining the drugs makes them available in a convenient dosing format, lower the dose of individual component, thus, reducing the side effects and improving compliance. Classes of antihypertensive agents which have been commonly used are angiotensin receptor blockers, thiazide diuretics, beta and alpha blockers, calcium antagonists and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors. Thiazide diuretics and calcium channel blockers are effective, as well as combinations that include renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blockers, in reducing BP. The majority of currently available fixed-dose combinations are diuretic-based. Combinations may be individualized according to the presence of comorbidities like diabetes mellitus, chronic renal failure, heart failure, thyroid disorders and for special population groups like elderly and pregnant females

Tangible interaction based on personal objects for collecting and sharing travel experience

The paper presents a case study which addresses the design of a system which supports the recollection of memories and the creation of storytelling by combining physical objects with digital resources. The purpose of our research is twofold. The first aim is to investigate the experience of travelling focusing on how objects and information support human activity. The second aim is to explore the Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) framework and the enabling technology in order to support recalling and sharing of travel experience. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007