Ash at CIID

Designing Gestural Interfaces 01

Dan Saffer’s talk at CIID some weeks ago was about his new book on designing for gestural interaction. His detailed and convincing talk clearly indicated that we have a new paradigm of  interaction challenge on our hands, one hastened by the radical increase in networks of sensors and other technologies with the potential to create context-aware ‘ecosystems’, fast emerging in advanced urban environments around the world. Why, there are even DIY (prosumer?) versions of these things! 

Dan’s enlightening presentation highlighted the various subtleties of the domain as well as some of the first thumb rules for gestural interface design. Issues highlighted included limitations of current interaction modes, the (under-explored) importance of ergonomics, types of interactive gestures, the preponderance of sensors, an overview of notation, prototyping for … phew! immersive stuff, literally. But I will let you find the real thing for yourself in his soon-to-be-released book. There’s also Dan’s exclusive wiki on the subject.

We had our own shot at tinkering around with the delightful Ardunio micro-controller some days later, and took the opportunity to develop our own gestural interfaces. My favorite was this one - RubberBots - for its degree of sensitivity and emotional subtlety in response to interaction.