Another field related to our study is the field of tangible user interfaces (TUIs). Comparing with software or graphic designers dealing with HCI, researches in TUIs focus much on tangible product as industrial designers’ perspective.
For people with a HCI background, the physical aspect is often new ground, and the physical has of course always formed an essential part of product design. Virtual aspects are gaining foothold in product design, as more and more electronics are embedded into products and distinction between products and computers become blurred. Product has become “intelligent”, and intelligence has no form. Design research naturally turned to the intelligent part of humans and thus to the science of cognition to find answers. This has result in interface design place a heavy burden on human intellect. Some researchers especially argue about how designers start to group and color coding related functions, adding displays with an abundance of text and icons, and writing logically structured manuals. They think the design of electronic product has got stuck as a result of this cognitive approach, which neglects the user physically and emotionally. (Djajadiningrat and et.
al., 2004)
At CHI 1997, Ishii and Ulmer first presented “tangible user interfaces (TUIs)”, which they defined as user interfaces that “augment the real physical world by coupling digital information to everyday physical objects and environment.” This paper has aroused a great interest in the research community. There have already been many research efforts devoted to tangible user interfaces (TUIs). Its all share a basic paradigm – a user uses their hands to operate some physical object via physical gestures; a computer system detects this, alters its state, and gives feedback accordingly.
Aesthetics of Interaction
Good interactive products respect all of human skills: cognitive, perceptual-motor and emotional skills, in other words, knowing, doing and feeling (Djajadiningrat and et. al., 2004). Current interactive design emphasizes our cognitive, our abilities to read, interpret and memory. Furthermore, what happens inside
electronic products is intangible, it neither fits the mechanics of our body nor the mechanical view of the world and the electronic world is more opaque to us. The researchers point out that augmented reality - by exploring perceptual-motor and emotional skills - could play a role in restoring the balance in addressing all of man’s skills in interaction; With perceptual-motor skills, it means what the user can perceive with his senses and what he can do with his body. With emotional skills, it means our abilities to experience, express emotions and recognize emotions. This includes our susceptibility to things of beauty as well as boredom. And they believe that with emphasizing these two aspects, it is the bridge between virtual world and physical world (Djajadiningrat and et. al., 2000).
According to the study, it focuses on a branch of design called “formgiving”. Traditionally, formgiving has been concerned with such aspects of objects as form, color, texture and material. In the context of interaction design, they have come to see formgiving as the way in which objects appeal to our senses and motor skills, both appearance and actions as carriers of meaning and they take usability and aesthetics as inextricably linked. They try to argue that in addition to a data-centered view, it is also possible to take a perceptual-motor-centered view on tangible interaction. They highlight a concept as “aesthetics of interaction”
in which three factors play important roles:
(1) Interaction pattern
Interaction pattern spins out between the user and product. The timing, flow and rhythm, linking user actions and product reactions, strongly influence the feel of the interaction.
(2) Richness of motor actions
Current creative program exploits a very narrow range of motor skills. “Skill” in the digital domain has become mainly a cognitive one - the learning and remembering of a recipe. There seems to be a fair amount of space to maneuver between the actions required by those objects and the push-bottom interfaces of today’s electronic products.
(3) Freedom of interaction
In most current products, activation of a function requires a fixed order, single course path in which the user does or does not get things correct. In this path the action are prescribed and need to be executed in a particular sequence. Instead of what interaction design has been concerned with optimizing this repetition of a single path for speed and efficiency, the researchers are much interested in products that offer a myriad ways of interacting with users. It implies that the users can express themselves in the interaction. The product allows expressive behavior - not constraining the user-and may even take advantage of it and also allows the feel of the interaction to stay fresh.
The studies in aesthetics of interaction inspire us when we try to deal with physical motion design. In stead of thinking what features should our prototype have, thinking of what people appreciate most in their experience and the fulfillment they get when dealing with a real clerk may be much important since we are try to transfer a real social experience into interaction design. Further more, in contrast to the controls of the current generation of electronic products, whether physical or screen-based, the buttons and labels indicating people is not base on intuition and require learning. We want to overcome this barrier with applying social dynamic design, by guide people under an analog behavior and interactive pattern they already get used to.
In advance, different functions should be presented through different actions, and the timing of or prototype responses should be appropriate to the actions and functions involved.
Tangible user interfaces have received much attention. It is believe that, at core, they are leaving the conventional computer virtual world, and taking steps into the physical world. Fitting interactive, physical products to man’s perceptual and motor capabilities may ultimately provide not only a route to improved usability, but also to an aesthetically rewarding experience. In our aspect, applying social intention is a way to achieve the goal of aesthetics of interaction.