Abstract
This contribution vets into Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) and objects’ smart attitudes as emerging contemporary practices. We investigate and discuss the process behind the design and implementation of a product conceived following an idea of intuitive, gesture-based interaction, unpacking and critically analyzing how TUIs are perceived by users. We analyze what it means to experience artifacts whose interactions are triggered by an interface embedded in an object apparently static, but actually technologically augmented and interactive. Through a specific case study, we unfold the results from a qualitative inquiry conducted on a community of prosumers revealing how such interfaces can be misleading. Emerged design issues became challenges for designers and researchers, in a strategic, designerly-ways-of-knowing logic, which led to improving the product keeping into consideration users’ expectancies and their actual interactions/behaviors with the product. In conclusion, we reflect on how designers can benefit from extrapolating users’ habits and cognitive processes from data, in order to be strategically instrumental in defining future design implementations, features, products, services, and even systems. Keywords: Tangible User Interfaces, IoT, interaction design, user centered design, user behaviour, design process, gesture-based interaction, embodied interface.
Highlights
Technology and digital transformation alongside play a paramount role in influencing the way we live and act (Castells, 2000), simplifying our daily life and activities, and providing answers to needs that often the technology itself created (McLuhan, 1964)
As a matter of fact, embedded technology and objects’ smart attitude outline a challenging field of investigation where design meets engineering, requiring approaches that are utterly interdisciplinary
As our same society constantly changes and reconfigures itself answering to the constant technological evolution (Turkle, 2012), and in particular to the ongoing digital transformation, analogously the disciplines that shape our everyday life are challenged to modify and reinvent themselves
Summary
Technology and digital transformation alongside play a paramount role in influencing the way we live and act (Castells, 2000), simplifying our daily life and activities, and providing answers to needs that often the technology itself created (McLuhan, 1964). To comprehend to what extent the user understands gesture-based interfaces that embed technology by remaining invisible (Krishna, 2015) and natural, and how designers can benefit from their potentialities, harnessing the kind of aesthetic experiences produced by augmented products and service, we ask ourselves: What does it mean to design satisfying interactions (from a user perspective, rather than a designer one) with TUI?
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
