Introduction to the special issue on movement-based interaction

Abstract

We are pleased to present this special issue of the Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing on movement-based interaction. In this special issue we aim to bring together work on human-centred approaches to understanding movement-based interaction and the design of technology to support this form of interaction. Many terms have been used to describe this area, to mention just a few—physical interaction, embodied interaction, graspable interfaces, tangible interfaces, embodied interfaces, physical computing and interactive spaces. Each area has a somewhat different orientation, but is covering closely related areas. Related research is also taking place in areas such as product design, fashion design, and interactive art, and under the umbrellas of ubiquitous computing, and mixed, virtual and augmented reality. For this introduction and this special issue, we use the term movement-based interaction, as it focuses more explicitly on the interaction rather than the interface. We also wanted to stretch the field of inquiry by focusing on the moving body in the interaction, an integral part in any interaction, but even more so in the extended design space which these new interactions enable. Research effort in this area of human–computer interaction (HCI) is also seeing a growing number of conferences, workshops and publications dedicated to its topics. We hope this special issue will encourage researchers and practitioners in the field to think further about the role of the body, and how bodily movement can and should be used in real use contexts; the body has yet to receive this type of dedicated attention in HCI. Some of the papers in this special issue were presented during the workshop Approaches to movementbased interaction held at Critical Computing 2005—Between Sense and Sensibility, The Fourth Aarhus Conference, in Denmark, August 2005. This workshop brought together researchers and practitioners from architecture, computer science, dance, design, engineering, fashion design, psychology and work practice, all areas involved in studying, researching and developing concepts, prototypes and applications that use human movement as input in some form. The authors of the workshop papers were invited to resubmit them for inclusion in this special issue, in addition the call for participation was distributed to the larger HCI community. We had a difficult time selecting the papers from the submissions we received. There were a number of high quality submission; even the papers we had to reject contained interesting contributions that we hope to see again in other forums. Each paper received two reviews, with an additional metareview by one of the special issue editors. We have aimed to present a balanced mix of submissions and to provide an overview of the type of work taking place in the area of movement-based interaction. We hope the result of this process will be useful both as a snapshot of the field, and a jumping off point for new research. The seven papers presented here can be categorised in different ways—we have chosen to see them in terms of their contribution to theoretical, methodological and design oriented aspects of movement-based interaction. We start the issue with three papers that present lessons learned and perspectives gained from the deA. T. Larssen (&) T. Robertson L. Loke J. Edwards Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology, Sydney, P.O.Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Sydney, Australia e-mail: atalarss@it.uts.edu.au