2005-03-15

Tangible Computing
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2005/view/e_sess/5960

Chris Heathcote, Matt Jones


[they have a griffin powermate, a big glowing knob, on the desk. i used to have
one of those wired up to undo/redo in bbedit so i could scrub back through the
changes i'd been making in code i'd written.]

"the digital strata are buried and opaque"

digital world: no natural affordances, we have to build them in.

play to our strengths: not computer strengths, but the ways we have to deal with
the physical world.

slide:
- extelligence
- cognitive economy
- social legibility

"if I can see you doing it in the world, I can copy you, and that gives you a
Cambrian explosion in " [interaction design and tangible computing]

[yup. inscription is very important]

use our attention wisely:
- glancability
- important information isn't in a window
- important information bubbles up
- direct combination

direct combination is something proposed by the open university. you select (by
touch, say) everything you want to do stuff with at the same time, and it'll
give you the verbs that can be used in the same place.


* what's out there now?

not just research places like the map table, it's being commercialised and done
there in the real world.

tablets:
- audiopad
- jazz mutant

smart furniture:
- interactive tables
- sensitive object (1 or 2 mics on any surface, then write an interface on it)
- smart carpets
- DDR

all seeing eyes:
- digital pens
- eyetoy
- augmented reality

with eyetoy, they can now map the entire human body.

passive information display:
- internet toaster
- ambient devices
- natural displays

ambient devices work on pre-attention cognition.

smart objects:
- haptics/force feedback
- physical movement
- 2d barcodes
- nfc

[this is basically a map of the current state of tangible computing.]

nfc:
http://www.nfcforum.org

- information in the tags, not a database: put read/writers everywhere

touch is really big because it reduces the number of clicks by one or two orders
of magnitude. an opportunity to reduce the complexity of the user interface like
this almost never happens.

[no select, no menu choice, etc. ultra contextual]

* what are people doing now?

more inputs
- acceleronmeters everywhere
- knobs
- microphones
- openeeg

more outputs:
- dotdotdot -- phone display that can be put on a backpack
- palm revival
- airport express

more programmability:
- standard protocols
- software affordances
	- each, documented i/o, apis
	- lego-set programming (automator)
- programming access to internals

[matt said that touch feels really natural. i have to say, it's not that it
feels natural, it feels like a coming home. then not having access to the
embodied computing feels unnatural afterwards.]

with touch: they've got it down to one click, but they haven't got rid of the
final confirm.

[i like, i like! the only thing that worries me about touch is that's it's
another step away from engelbart's context-centred addressibility, which doesn't
exist on the desktop, and barely exists on the www. but it has so many
advantage, like keeping in the information in the place. an interesting
balance.]