A summary of:

Djajadiningrat, T. et al., 2004. Tangible products: redressing the balance between appearance and action. Personal Ubiquitous Comput., 8(5), 294-309. (online article)

Figure 1: Design examples clockwise from top left - Oposite poles exercise, tapedeck, digital camera, alarm clock, heating programmer (from Djajadiningrat et. al 2004).

This paper discusses several design examples from the authors’ research which explore notions of meaning and aesthetics in interaction design. They work from a Gibsonian ecological psychology perspective, but approach it in an original way. Rather than focusing on affordances as invitations to action, they look beyond this to ways of communicating what the result of the action will be. They refer to this concept as ‘feedforward’ and seek to create a meaningful relationship between appearance, action and function.

Whereas designs would usually communicate what the results of actions will be by using icons or text (a semantic approach which emphasises cognitive skills), the authors seek to communicate this through the action, affordances, feedback and tangible qualities of the interface (a direct approach, which emphasises perceptual-motor and emotional skills).

They present five design examples through which they have explored these ideas.

Opposite poles: A student design exercise to express qualities in physical form.
Videodeck: A video tape player and recorder concept which explored how the form of controls could be used do differentiate them and communicate the required actions.
Digital camera: A concept which explored the relationship between physical forms, component relationships and product functionality.
Heating controller: A programmable heating controller which demonstrated the possibility for making the programming of a heating system a fluid physical action and explored unity in input and output of the device.
**Alarm clock: **A concept which left open the precise manner in which a person could program it and thereby allowed for the possibility of emotional and aesthetic expression.

The paper ends with a reflection on and critique of the wider field of tangible interaction. First, they suggest that natural mapping is used by too many interfaces in tangible interaction and that though this approach can work well for some applications, there are many others for which it falls short. Secondly, they criticize the tendency in many tangible interfaces to use identical looking blocks which are used to interact with the system. They reflect that much tangible interaction research is actually ‘GUI thinking in disguise’, where an essentially 2D interaction paradigm has been minimally extruded into a physical form.