Minding the Body
Opportunities forInteractive System Design
Wijnand IJsselsteijn
What would a team of Martian paleantologists and archeologists deduce about our species when encountering the remnants of our information society, i.e., a desktop computer?
Imagine 10,000 years from now…
Homo Desktopus
© Koert van Mensvoort
Major trends
• New sensing possibilities: moving from keyboard/mouse to gesture-controlled interfaces, multitouch surfaces, face recognition, activity sensing, context sensing, biometrics, physiological measures
• Diversifying physical interfaces: media form factors ranging from small, wearable displays (mobile computing), to large-scale ambient and immersive 3D environments
• Shift in application purpose: From productivity-oriented workplace technologies where performance is a key objective, to applications for everyday life, that aim for user experiences through leisure, play, culture and art
/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences
Marc Weiser, 1991
“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the
fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”
Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs)
Page 713-04-2023/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences
Marble answering machine
Durell Bishop, RCA
MIT’s IO Brush
Ryokai, Marti and Ishii, MIT
Disney’s Touché
/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences
Gesture-based Interaction
Tom Cruise in Minority Report
A magazine is an iPad that does not work
/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences
Communication at a distance
Hearing…
Seeing…
Touch at a distance: Design explorations
http://www.cutecircuit.com/products/thehugshirt/
What technologies are being used?
• Tactile displays
Does mediated touch work at all?
• Potential limitation– Tactile displays do not yet
convey the richness of human touch
• Can a mediated touch using simple electro-mechanical actuators yield similar effects as a real human touch?
What’s happening here?
Midas Touch
• A brief touch on the arm orshoulder can:– Increase compliance to a request– Increase pro-social behavior (e.g.,
helping behavior)
• Proven effective in F2F settings:– Get on a bus for free– Have someone hold on to your excitable
dog while you go shopping– Get better tips when working as a
waitress– Get people to help you if you drop
something (disks, papers, pens, ...)
The “dropping of items paradigm”
Mediated Touch via tactile vest
Mediated Midas Touch
Condition helping
Touch 76.6%
No Touch 50%
(p = 0.03; one-sided Fisher exact test)
It seems to work…
Conclusion
• Engaging the body in HCI broadens the human-machine interaction bandwidth– Creating more natural interactions– Creating more engaging experiences
• We need a combination of human-oriented and engineering sciences to help us move forward
• Exciting time to be an engineer, a psychologist, or an interaction designer!
/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences
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