A Design Approach for Tangible User Interfaces

Tangible interfaces allow physical control and representation of digital information. When designing such interfaces one needs to take into consideration the potential conflicts between the hardware of the artifact and the form of the user control. The design problem is a search for an appropriate fitness (or effortless coexistence) between these two aspects. This problem makes tangible interface design different from the traditional graphical interface design. In this paper we present an approach to aid the design of tangible interfaces based on the desired fitness. We investigate the potential conflicts of tangible interaction by addressing the fitness problem and propose a set of guidelines (in the form of eight questions) that help by defining the boundaries of the electro-mechanics (hardware) and ergonomic design space, identifying the nature of tangible interaction for various sub-tasks and finally fitting the various components of the electro-mechanics and physical-ergonomics of the artifact to provide a component level fitness. This component level fitness can form the basis for the final form of the tangible interfaces.