Transcript Document

Physical Interaction Design
and Realization
Introduction
[email protected]
Intro
• Who's who: Cristian course leader and examiner
– Assistant: Vygandas Simbelis (Vegas)
• A bit of course history
– Traditionally one intensive week using one technology
– For the 6th time in this extended format, introducing
multiple technologies, and a variety of approaches
– 12 F + 12 L theoretically, the rest of the time you will
do own work, Cristian will be around for questions
– "Under construction"
Spirit
• We approach Physical Computing from an
HCI/Interaction Design tradition
• Novel forms of interaction
• Continuously evolving area, lots of
projects, tools and approaches out there
– always something new to learn
– always something to look up
– there is no person who knows everything
Objectives
• Students will get familiar with techniques and
technologies allowing them to create interactive
systems that work outside, or along with the
classical mouse-keyboard-and-screen/WIMP
paradigm.
• Students will be able identify the sensors,
actuators and microcontrollers needed for a
system,
• and use them for prototypes of various levels of
fidelity, which they will put together in a handson manner.
Administrative checklist
• Personal intro
– interest in the course
– Level of programming knowledge
– Level of electronics/hardware knowledge
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Book: O’Sullivan and Igoe, Physical Computing
English
E-mails
Laptops
Projects: "the prototype", "the project”, project video
group work (project, 7,5hp) and individual reflection
(blog!)
• Course schedule, issues
• Guest lectures may be added later
An Interaction Design Perspective
on Physical Computing
• Interaction Design (from Preece et al.)
– Designing interactive products to support people in their
everyday and working lives
• In this course we introduce a specific set of challenges
and materials for such design
• "Physical Interaction Design"
• The challenges have to do less with usability goals
Effectivenes, efficiency, safety, utility, learnability, memorability
• … but user experience goals are more important:
– satisfying, enjoyable, fun, entertaining, helpful, motivating,
aesthetically pleasing, supporting creativity, rewarding,
emotionally fulfilling
Usability principles applied to
Physical computing
Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (1988)
Cognitive approach
– Visibility of features
– Feedback
– Constraints
• Physical, logical, cultural
– Mapping
– Consistency
– Affordance
• Attribute that allows people to know how to use it
Definitions
• Definitions by exclusion, i.e. what it is not
• Preece et al. "For many years the prevailing
paradigm in IxD was to develop applications for
the desktop…single users in front of a CPU,
monitor, keyboard and mouse…WIMP" (page
60). Paradigms "beyond the desktop"
• Dix et al., page 716: computers as glass box:
press buttons and see the effect. Breaking the
glass box by linking the real and the electronic.
Devices are distributed through the physical
world and more tightly integrated with it
User experience
• Every product has a user experience, from
newspapers to ketchup bottles (Preece et
al., Garrett 2003)
• You cannot design a user experience, only
design for a user experience
– One cannot create a sensual experience, only
create the design features that can evoke it
Embodied Interaction
• Paul Dourish “Where the action is”
• Tangible and Social approaches to computing
• What does tangible have to do with the social?
– They both explore our familiarity and facility with the
everyday world
– World of social interaction, world of physical artefacts
– The way everyday world works, the way we
experience it
Definitions in relation to the human
body
• Tom Igoe's course, http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/
• Physical Computing is an approach to learning
how humans communicate through computers
• that starts by considering how humans express
themselves physically.
• In this course, we take the human body as a
given, and attempt to design computing
applications within the limits of its expression.
Igoe (cont’d)
• To realize this goal, you'll learn how a computer
converts the changes in energy given off by our
bodies (in the form of sound, light, motion, and
other forms) into changing electronic signals that
it can read interpret.
• You'll learn about the sensors that do this, and
about very simple computers called
microcontrollers that read sensors and convert
their output into data.
• Finally, you'll learn how microcontrollers
communicate with other computers.
Troubles with definitions
• Definitions by exclusion are not so helpful. That
somehow explains why things are so diverse (which is
not bad in itself)
• Most definitions do not account for the social implications
of many installations (except e.g. Dourish)
– Most of them are not "personal" like PCs so more than one
person can interact with them in a meaningful fashion. I.e.
socially meaningful
– Even if they are personal, their data might travel to others via the
internet. http://mediacup.teco.edu/
• The MediaCup is an ordinary coffee cup augmented with sensing,
processing and communication capabilities, to collect and
communicate general context information in a given environment. In
this project, coffee cups are computerized to integrate them and the
information they hold— where the cup is, how it is handled, and
whether it’s hot or cold— as context into surrounding information
ecologies.
(techie) Visions of Computing
• Preece et al., page 60, Alan Dix et al. chapter 20
• Ubiquitous computing (Weiser), technology embedded in
the environment, the user doesn't need to walk to it, but
it locates the user and serves him/her. "Woodwork"
– Pervasive computing, anytime anywhere, either by portability or
by embedding in everyday objects like fridge doors
– Wearable computing (clothes, jewelry, shoes, glasses), Body
Area Network
– Nomadic computing (Kleinrock)
Techie Visions
• Tangible User Interaction or Tangible bits (Hiroshii Ishii),
integrations of computational augmentations into the
physical reality
– E.g. books embedded with digital information
– "breaking the glass box"
– Augmented Reality, virtual representations superimposed on
physical devices/objects
– Interactive surfaces (tabletops)
– Context-aware computing: When, where, who, why?
Dialog with the materials
• The act of design is often regarded as a
dialogue
• The “artist-designer” makes sketches or other
intermediary representations and evaluates
them before the next step
• Prototyping
• Materials for us: digital (controllers, sensors,
actuators), physical (foam, cardboard…),
traditional digital (desktops, etc)
Components of a Physical
Computing System
• controllers
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high-level (Basic Stamp, Phidgets)
low-level (PIC)
middle level (Arduino)
wireless sensors platforms (mostly low level), Smart-it, Mote
Middle-level wireless sensor platform: SunSPOT
• sensors
• actuators
• communication to other controller or PC
– wireless communication
• programming environment on PC