The Past, Present & Futures of Tangible Computing

Tangible and physical computing gives a physical form to digital information. With the emergence of a screen-centred computation system and interaction between human and computer being framed by the constraints of windows, icons, menus and pointers (WIMP), a disconnection between the individual and the real world ensued. For thousands of years, physical things have been used to represent abstract information and relationships. With this in mind, the evolution of a tangible user interface (TUI), which allows individuals to use a physical object to manipulate and play with a digital representation of a concept, makes sense. TUIs facilitate the human urge to be creative and engage with objects and information.

This element of tangible computing has been appropriated for the purpose of educating children. Flow Blocks, for example, are physical blocks that let children explore the concept of causality. To take the example of epidemiology, the blocks (arranged in a particular order), can show the spread of disease in a real world context. The blocks can light up to denote how the disease spreads and the children can interact with the objects by adding ‘probes’ to extract digital information on the data flow.This can be contrasted with another area of HCI, such as UbiComp, where there is less of an emphasis on interactivity and a move away from physical enactments. UbiComp (and Weiser’s vision in particular) sought to decrease the amount of daily physical activities, such as making coffee and paying for parking.

As part of the conference, ‘Tangible Computing: The Past, Present & Future’, I am co-chairing the session called ‘Theory & Philosophy’. With this in mind, I chose ‘Getting a Grip on Tangible Interaction’, ‘Towards a New set of Ideals’ and ‘TUIs in Context and Theory’. After an initial exploration of the key concepts pertinent to Tangible Computing, I decided to begin to search for literature (from the ACM Library) that attempted to unpack the theoretical concepts of TUIs. A couple of the papers explored the notion of space and how it is inhabited and experienced in connection with digital technology. A central theme was disentangling how tangible interaction is embedded and occurs in different spaces. A shift from an ‘information centric’ to an ‘action centric’ perspective of TUIs was also highlighted. For me, the inference of agency in this shift is at the heart of TUIs. With agency comes a need to facilitate multiple and subjective interpretations of how to use tangible technologies, and this was another theoretical framework that was explored within the literature I identified.