The Interweaving of the Physical and the Social - The Tangible Interaction Framework Revisited

Abstract

I will revisit our 2006 CHI paper which presented a framework on tangible interaction. We had defined how tangible interaction as an umbrella term can unite different approaches to tangibility in interfaces and what themes are relevant for understanding user interaction and experience in this realm. This framework has been revised, extended and refined over the past years. In particular the pragmatic level of 'sensitizing questions' which tease apart the different aspects relevant to the framework concepts has been worked out to stand on its own. The purpose of these questions is to inspire and provoke ideas for design and analysis brainstorming sessions.

BIO:

Eva Hornecker is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK. In previous lives, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Pervasive Interaction Lab at the Open University and the University of Sussex (working on the Equator project) in the UK, and an Acting Lecturer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and at the TU Vienna in Austria. She wrote a PhD theses on 'Tangible Interfaces as a medium for collaboration support' at the University of Bremen. Her research interests concern multimodal, tangible and embodied interaction, user research, design methods, and qualitative research methods for understanding user interaction with 'beyond the desktop' technologies.