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Easy doesn’t do it: skill and expression in tangible aesthetics

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Abstract

In this paper, we articulate the role of movement within a perceptual-motor view of tangible interaction. We argue that the history of human–product interaction design has exhibited an increasing neglect of the intrinsic importance of movement. On one hand, human–product interaction design has shown little appreciation in practice of the centrality of our bodily engagement in the world. This has resulted in technologies that continue to place demands on our cognitive abilities, and deny us the opportunity of building bodily skill. On the other hand, the potential for movement in products to be a meaningful component of our interaction with them has also been ignored. Both of these directions (design for bodily engagement and the expressiveness of product movements) are sketched out, paying particular respect for their potential to impact both interaction aesthetics and usability. We illustrate a number of these ideas with examples.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the following people: Jacob Buur of the Mads Clausen Institute for his intellectual guidance towards a ‘skills’ view on tangible interaction; Loe Feijs of the Designed Intelligence Group and Steven Kyffin of Philips Design for their seminal thinking on 4D form: Loe for enthusiastically providing Semotion students with crash courses on semiotic theory and microprocessor controlled servos, and Steven for his highly motivating briefing and coaching of students on design expressiveness; Ton van de Graft for technology support; Peter Peters for co-organizing the Stacked Actions assignment; Loe Feijs, Geert van de Boomen and Peter Peters for their help on the electronics of the thermostat prototype; Meindert Janszen and Jos van de Laat for the physical prototyping of the thermostat; and of course, our students on the IT-Product Design course of the University of Southern Denmark and the Industrial Design course of TU Eindhoven for their hard work on the examples shown and their willingness to suspend their disbelief.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mads Clausen Institute for Product Innovation, University of Southern Denmark , Sønderborg, Denmark

    Tom Djajadiningrat, Ben Matthews & Marcelle Stienstra

  2. Designed Intelligence Group, Faculty of Industrial Design, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Tom Djajadiningrat

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  1. Tom Djajadiningrat
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Correspondence to Tom Djajadiningrat.

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Djajadiningrat, T., Matthews, B. & Stienstra, M. Easy doesn’t do it: skill and expression in tangible aesthetics. Pers Ubiquit Comput 11, 657–676 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-006-0137-9

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