What is Tangible, Physical and Embodied Computing?

A question I couldn’t answer one week ago but assumed that it includes a touch element in it. Brygg Ullmer went through the details of this computing field in his defense of his PhD thesis. Having watched the video of his defense, I managed to understand what this field entailed. Yet, for a deeper and clearer understanding of what he was saying, I found his actual thesis paper and the paper he submitted to CHI in 1997 with the head of The Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Laboratory Hiroshi Ishii and will be referring to those in this blog post.

According to Ishii and Ullmer (1997), “Tangible User Interfaces” (TUIs) aim to overcome the limitations of Graphical User interfaces (GUIs) which confine the interactions between people and the virtual world through icons and boxes on desktops/laptops. TUIs are introduced as a new field of HCI which differs from the areas of ubiquitous computing, augmented reality, and cooperative buildings which look into physically contextualized interaction and have different design implications (Ullmer, 2002). In comparison Ullmer states that TUIs mainly emphasize “the properties of the user interface of systems of representational physical artefacts”.

In their work in 1997, Ishii and Ullmer state three concrete goals to support the idea of transforming computing from “painted bits” to “tangible bits”:

1) Creation of Interactive Surfaces: each surface within architectural space (e.g., walls, desktops, ceilings, doors, windows) is transformed into an active interface linking the physical world to the virtual world.

2) Coupling of Bits and Atoms: seamlessly coupling daily life graspable objects (e.g. cards, books, models) with “virtual objects” (digital information).

3) Ambient Media: using ambient media such as sound, light, airflow, and water movement for background interfaces with cyberspace at the periphery of human perception.

In line with the above, to illustrate the concept of “Tangible Bits”, Ullmer mentions two prototypes of related previous work :

• Tangible Geospace (metaDesk) which supports the interaction with a geographical space through the manipulation of phicons (physical tokens) and supporting tools.
• HyperCards (barcode-tagged paper cards) which serve as containers of digital strokes. These can be attached to a transBOARD (networked digitally-enhanced physical whiteboard).

In addition, he highlights the potential strengths of TUIs including:

• Direct manipulation
• Two-handed interactions
• Multi-user interactions
• Presence of physically situated interactions

 

As for his PhD thesis work, Ullmer uses the terminology tokens which are physically manipulated elements of tangible interfaces. He introduces mediaBlocks; a system relying on tokens for representations and controls for online information in order to illustrate the potential of TUIs. In fact, mediaBlocks have digital ID tags embedded in them, enabling them to act as “containers” for data sets (in this case online content). As a result, digital media can be easily transferred from one medium to another enabling the user to control (since sequencing can be performed) and manipulate larger abstract information.

In order to further explore the different trends in computing, I selected Chapter 2 of Paul Dourish’ book Where the Action is (2004) as he clearly goes through the different design trends in computing from a historical and theoretical perspective and highlights some of the key challenges in TUIs. Based on Dourish’s claims and questions, I selected the two papers: Getting a Grip of Tangible Interaction: A framework on Physical Space and Social Interaction ( CHI 2006)( http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1124838)  and Towards a New set of Ideals: Consequences of the Practice Turn in Tangible Interaction (TEI’08)( http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1347441&CFID=691346721&CFTOKEN=78925924) . The first one discusses a potential framework including four themes which aim to provide a better understanding of “tangible interaction” and the second challenges some of the concepts discussed in TUIs and proposes alternatives.

References:

Dourish, Paul. Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT press, 2004.

Ishii, H., & Ullmer, B. (1997, March). Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 234-241). ACM.

Ullmer, B. A. (2002). Tangible interfaces for manipulating aggregates of digital information (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).