If Computers Could Shrug
Because carrying around four jackets “just in case” is a bad idea.
Computers have not only saturated our businesses but also our homes and personal lives. Their original purpose was to increase productivity. However, in today’s world, what do we sacrifice if we focus solely on efficiency?
The Problem
For the last three decades, computer technology has revolved around graphic-user interfaces. However, with the potential accessibility of all of the other senses and abilities humans use on a daily basis, the question arises “Why should computers be limited to the traditional ‘window, icon, menu, pointer’ analogy?” If the sophistication and usability of computers is to continue to grow, the ways in which people interact with them will need to expand as well.
1984
2014
4D Multiple Resource Model (Wickens 2008)
The Opportunity
For many years, researchers have been exploring a range of human capabilities that can be harnessed to interact with computer devices. Tactile and kinesthetic perception have been the most common sources of experimentation. There are several different classes of interfaces that use these channels of perception, including haptic, tangible, and most recently, organic. Employing texture, shape, and motion, organic-user interfaces can go beyond proposing a quantitative solution; they can actually express a computer’s “thinking” process.
Haptic
Tangible
Organic
Creating a Language
One barrier that currently exists with the democratization of organic-user interfaces is they do not have a standardized language. On the other hand, people and animals use their bodies to communicate quite frequently. This inspired the theory that by creating a collection of user interactions with organic-user interfaces which adopt animal body language principles, people would be able to more intuitively collaborate with computers. Of the animal biological communication apparatuses tested, epidermal appendages, posture, and breathing are the most promising.
Epidermal Appendages
Posture
Trembling
Breathing
Body Size
Application of Theory
Every day people have to make decisions about what to wear based on the weather. This normally requires interpreting several numbers expressed in degrees and percentages. However, in order to make a decision people do not require numbers but rather an understanding of the meaning behind them. Organic-user interfaces have the ability to decipher these numbers and express their meaning to people in ambient and non-disruptive ways. My final concept was a coat rack with a kinetic interface. It consisted of pegs that move in a breathing-like motion. The faster the “breathing”, the stronger the coat rack’s suggestion is for the user to choose the associated jacket for that day.
40° F
50° F
50° F and Rain
1. The coat rack collects and analyses data from weather API
2. The breathing pegs move based on its jacket suggestions.
3. The user chooses a jacket based on the coat rack’s suggestion.
4. The jacket collects data on what the weather is while being worn.
The purpose of this project was not to claim that GUI have no place in the future of computers, but to help designers understand all of the technological options that exist in order to design optimal solutions for our users.