Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT): Challenges and Opportunities for Tangible Interaction with IoT

Leonardo Angelini,Nadine Couture,Elena Mugellini,Omar Abou Khaled

doi:10.3390/informatics5010007

Abstract

In the Internet of Things era, an increasing number of everyday objects are able to offer innovative services to the user. However, most of these devices provide only smartphone or web user interfaces. As a result, the interaction is disconnected from the physical world, decreasing the user experience and increasing the risk of user alienation from the physical world. We argue that tangible interaction can counteract this trend and this article discusses the potential benefits and the still open challenges of tangible interaction applied to the Internet of Things. After an analysis of open challenges for Human-Computer Interaction in IoT, we summarize current trends in tangible interaction and extrapolate eight tangible interaction properties that could be exploited for designing novel interactions with IoT objects. Through a systematic review of tangible interaction applied to IoT, we show what has been already explored in the systems that pioneered the field and the future explorations that still have to be conducted. In order to guide future work in this field, we propose a design card set for supporting the generation of tangible interfaces for IoT objects. The card set has been evaluated during a workshop with 21 people and the results are discussed.

Highlights

IntroductionElectronic devices are spreading in our environments, seamlessly integrating in our everyday life
Thanks to technological advances, electronic devices are spreading in our environments, seamlessly integrating in our everyday life
As a second contribution to the emerging field of the Internet of Tangible Things, we present in Section 7 a card set that aims at helping designers conceiving the interface of new Internet of Things (IoT) objects or improving the interaction with existing ones

Summary

Introduction

Electronic devices are spreading in our environments, seamlessly integrating in our everyday life. Smartphones have brought ubiquitous computing to the mass and nowadays, interaction with technology is becoming more frequent and intuitive. In the context of Ubiquitous Computing, since 1999, researchers working in the domain of Internet of Things (IoT) are overcoming technological barriers and are investigating novel applications for connected objects in healthcare, transportation and smart-environments, which could bring many potential benefits for the human well-being [2]. For 2020, Intel is forecasting 200 billion IoT objects, i.e., 26 connected devices per person [3]. Until now most IoT research focused on the technological challenges, often overlooking the important research issues of how humans should interact with this multitude of IoT objects [4]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion