Tangible interaction (TI) is one of the core research areas of the Chair of Human-Computer Interaction.
But what does it mean? What actually IS TI and how does it differ from other types of systems? What are the benefits of TI versus GUI-based interfaces? Where are the constraints? Why isn’t a touchscreen sufficiently tangible? What are possible configurations and use cases?
We will dig into some research papers and projects to understand the concept of tangible interaction and to find out about the current state of this area of work. We will in particular study the ‘token and constraint’ paradigm for understanding and specifying tangible interfaces.
Then we will investigate into the design space of TI (i.e. the typology of such interfaces and their properties) and create a series of objects and interfaces to explore TI, where each object/interface is an example for a different type or style of tangible interaction.
In this project, we will work in small groups (ideally pairs) to develop our design/functional prototypes. We will be using a range of technologies (as appropriate) for implementing our ideas, including Arduino or Raspberry Pie, ReacTivision, and others. |
