Paper Reading #4: Tangible Interfaces for Download

Comments:
Adam Friedli
Jessica Gonzales
  

Reference Information:

Title: Tangible Interfaces for Download: Initial Observations from Users' Everyday Environments

Authors: E. Constanza, M. Giaccone, O. Kung, S. Shelley, J. Huang.

Presentation: (Conference Paper) CHI 2010, April 10-15, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Summary:
This article presents an example of a Tangible User Interface (TUI), how it has been presented and tested by users, and attempts to understand the effect that such an interface has upon its everyday users. The authors introduce TUIs by stating that the HCI community has been discussing and research about this kind of interfaces for about 15 years. They explain that in such a set up, physical objects are used to control and represent digital date, similar to a GUI. In order to study how the use of such an interface would be accepted by its users, they developed Audio d-touch, an Internet-based application.

The authors emphasize that such interfaces have mainly been studied in research, and are probably exhibits at museums. The reason being is that the artifacts implemented for the interface are usually expensive, thus users have not yet had the opportunity to interact with a TUI. Audio d-touch on the other hand is inexpensive and easy to set up, thus they were able to distribute it online, along with a list of easy instructions the user can follow for the set up. 

How it Works: The web cam not only records the activity, but also functions to identify the movements and positions of the blocks in relation to the activity area. Each of the objects positions is mapped to music synthesis parameters. 

Set Up: Audio d-touch only requires a computer, a web cam and a printer. The user is given markers and labels that they need to print, and glue to physical objects, like chocolate bars. Then they need to set up the web cam hanging from a desk lamp or another type of stand, and place physical interface they just created under the web cam. Then they can start creating they own rhythms of music, recording, saving or deleting.

Source

In order to be able to analyze the reaction of the users, they created a logging system, when the users that downloaded the application had to create an account, and be online every time they were using the application. With this set up, the researchers were able to obtain information about the users, for example if the had used a TUI before, if they had any music background, their age, and also they had access to the videos that were recorded when using the interface.

The authors explain how majority of comments and feedback they received from the testing were positive. Some of the comments were encouraging and would give them ideas about some functionality that they should probably add to the interface. Not many comments reported difficulties with the set up, which as they say, it shows that it is a simple, easy to follow set up. 

Discussion:

I had never read about TUIs before, but without a doubt this is an interesting and innovative concept. I liked the idea of putting such an inexpensive and easy to construct interface out there for the public. Even though, as they explain, there has been some research in this field for about 15  years, it had not been made available for everyday users.

I think it should of been expected that many of the users that tried Audio d-touch would see it more as a toy or interesting artifact instead of a professional tool. This interface still needs some more functionality to be added before it can be useful to professional musicians. However, if they were to continue working on it, and really try to develop something that would be marketable, I think they would be able to obtain different manufactured settings that would look more professional and musicians would really appreciate it as something worth their value, and not just a toy.

I understand they were trying to study the reactions and interactions between such interfaces and their users, but I still think they were obtaining much information from the users. I mean, they were even able to learn about the places where these interfaces were setup, for example, they mentioned majority of them had been set up on offices or bedrooms. I am not sure if I would be willing to give up such information even when it seems like a really interesting activity to do.