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The case of sculpting atmospheres: towards design principles for expressive tangible interaction in control of ambient systems

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Abstract

According to the vision of Ambient Intelligence, technology will seamlessly merge into people’s everyday activities and environments. A challenge facing designers of such systems is to create interfaces that fit in people’s everyday contexts and incorporate the values of daily life. This paper focuses on tangible expressive interaction as one possible approach towards linking everyday experiences to intuitive forms of interaction and presents a number of principles for expressive interaction design in this field. A case study of a tangible expressive interface to control a living room atmosphere projection system (orchestrating living room lighting, audio and video-art) is presented to illustrate and reflect upon the design principles. Furthermore, the case study describes possible techniques towards integrating the design principles into a design method.

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Acknowledgements

Technical infrastructure support for the case study was provided by the Residential Gateway Environment project, funded by Senter, Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. Philip Ross conducted the case study as his master’s thesis at Delft University of Technology. The authors would like to thank Caroline Hummels, Kees Overbeeke and Aadjan van der Helm for their input in the case study, Julie Beusmans and Liliane Hoyng for work on the moodboards, V.J. Jeroen Vester for his help in creating the video art and Rob Luxen and Kerem Odabasi for excellent technical assistance. Photos of Fig. 3 by P. Musters.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Den Dolech 2, 513, 5600, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Philip Ross

  2. Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628, Delft, The Netherlands

    David V. Keyson

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  1. Philip Ross
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  2. David V. Keyson
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Correspondence to Philip Ross.

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Ross, P., Keyson, D.V. The case of sculpting atmospheres: towards design principles for expressive tangible interaction in control of ambient systems. Pers Ubiquit Comput 11, 69–79 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-005-0062-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-005-0062-3

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