Minding the Body

Opportunities forInteractive System Design

Wijnand IJsselsteijn

What would a team of Martian paleantologists and archeologists deduce about our species when encountering the remnants of our information society, i.e., a desktop computer?

Imagine 10,000 years from now…

Homo Desktopus

© Koert van Mensvoort

Major trends

• New sensing possibilities: moving from keyboard/mouse to gesture-controlled interfaces, multitouch surfaces, face recognition, activity sensing, context sensing, biometrics, physiological measures

• Diversifying physical interfaces: media form factors ranging from small, wearable displays (mobile computing), to large-scale ambient and immersive 3D environments

• Shift in application purpose: From productivity-oriented workplace technologies where performance is a key objective, to applications for everyday life, that aim for user experiences through leisure, play, culture and art

/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences

Marc Weiser, 1991

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the

fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs)

Page 713-04-2023/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences

Marble answering machine

Durell Bishop, RCA

MIT’s IO Brush

Ryokai, Marti and Ishii, MIT

Disney’s Touché

/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences

Gesture-based Interaction

Tom Cruise in Minority Report

A magazine is an iPad that does not work

/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences

Communication at a distance

Hearing…

Seeing…

Touch at a distance: Design explorations

http://www.cutecircuit.com/products/thehugshirt/

What technologies are being used?

• Tactile displays

Does mediated touch work at all?

• Potential limitation– Tactile displays do not yet

convey the richness of human touch

• Can a mediated touch using simple electro-mechanical actuators yield similar effects as a real human touch?

What’s happening here?

Midas Touch

• A brief touch on the arm orshoulder can:– Increase compliance to a request– Increase pro-social behavior (e.g.,

helping behavior)

• Proven effective in F2F settings:– Get on a bus for free– Have someone hold on to your excitable

dog while you go shopping– Get better tips when working as a

waitress– Get people to help you if you drop

something (disks, papers, pens, ...)

The “dropping of items paradigm”

Mediated Touch via tactile vest

Mediated Midas Touch

Condition helping

Touch 76.6%

No Touch 50%

(p = 0.03; one-sided Fisher exact test)

It seems to work…

Conclusion

• Engaging the body in HCI broadens the human-machine interaction bandwidth– Creating more natural interactions– Creating more engaging experiences

• We need a combination of human-oriented and engineering sciences to help us move forward

• Exciting time to be an engineer, a psychologist, or an interaction designer!

/ Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences

w.a.ijsselsteijn@tue.nl

@Psych_Tech