Drawing lessons in the design of tangible media from a study of interactions with mechanical products

Authors:
Margot Brereton
Affiliations:
University of Queensland
Venue:
AUIC '01 Proceedings of the 2nd Australasian conference on User interface
Year:
2001

Citing 4
Cited 1

Tangible interfaces for remote collaboration and communication

CSCW '98 Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Affordance, conventions, and design

interactions
An observational study of how objects support engineering design thinking and communication: implications for the design of tangible media

Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Ubiquitous Computing

Computer

Work at hand: an exploration of gesture in the context of work and everyday life to inform the design of gestural input devices

AUIC '03 Proceedings of the Fourth Australasian user interface conference on User interfaces 2003 - Volume 18

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

There has been an increasing interest in objects within the HCI field particularly with a view to designing tangible interfaces. However, little is known about two key issues in tangible interface design: how people make sense of objects and; how objects support thinking. This paper draws upon a study of how engineers learn from mechanical products as a starting point for considering how to design interactions with physical objects that have embedded computational capabilities, that is, hardware in the tangible digital domain. The key lessons are to design devices that support interaction and user inquiry. Mechanical devices are intelligible when they: give feedback; can be reconfigured; and perform differently in different contexts. These qualities allow their users to develop inquiry processes and to gradually build a repertoire of familiar devices and operating principles.