Tangible and social interaction

On a Nintendo DS in a café, two people are sending each other stick-figure drawings over PictoChat. On a TV in someone’s living room, four people are singing along to Singstar and making each other worse at it. At a bus stop in Berkeley, a phone is quietly logging which other phones it’s been near over the course of a day, a map of familiar strangers.

Two lectures given at AHO in Oslo in January 2005, arguing that tangible and social interaction are the next chapter after the desktop. The PDF of the full presentation is here (1.9MB). Posted partly in response to Matt Jones and Chris Heathcote‘s ETech presentation (notes, link restored from Wayback).

Brief history of interaction

(Based on Dourish, see reading recommendations below.)

Each successive development in computer history has made greater use of human skills:

Electrical: required a thorough understanding of electrical design
Symbolic: required a thorough understanding of the manipulation of abstract languages
Textual: text dialogue with the computer, which set the standards of interaction we still live with today
Graphic: graphical dialogue with the computer, using our spatial skills, pattern recognition, and motion memory with a mouse and keyboard

We have become stuck in this last model. Interaction with computers has remained largely the same: desk, screen, input devices. Even entirely new fields like mobile and interactive television have followed these interaction patterns.

Definitions

Tangible: physical; having substance or material existence; perceptible to the senses
Social: human and collaborative abilities, or ‘software that’s better because there’s people there’ (definition from Matt Jones and Matt Webb)

Examples

Dourish argues that as interaction with computers moves out into the world it becomes part of our social world too. The social and the tangible are intricately linked as part of ‘being in the world’.

Below are products and services available now, where these theories of ubiquitous computing and tangible interaction are moving out into the world, and at the trends visible in currently available products.

There is also strong work in research, the Tangible Media Group for instance, but the emergent effects of millions of people using things are more telling: (Flickr, weblogs, Nintendo DS, mobile social software).

Social trends on the web

The current trend on the web is building simple platforms that support complex social behaviour.

Weblogs, newsreaders and RSS: a simple platform that has changed the way the web works and supported simple social interaction (the basic building blocks of dialogue, or conversation)
Flickr: a simple platform for media/photo sharing that turned into a thriving community. Works well with the web by allowing syndicated photos, and bases the social network on top of a defined function
Others: del.icio.us, World of Warcraft

Social mobile computing

On mobile platforms, the work is around presence, context and location.

Familiar Strangers: stores a list of all the phones you’ve been near in places you inhabit, then visualises the space around you according to who you’ve met before. More mobile social software.
Mogi: a location-based game, most interestingly in that it supports different contexts of use, both at home in front of a big screen and out on a small mobile screen.

Social games

Games are moving away from pure immersive 3D worlds and starting to give equal attention to their situated, social context.

Nintendo DS: PictoChat and local wireless networks, adapted for gameplay or communication (picture chatting included as standard)
Sissyfight: very simple social game structure, encourages human behaviour, insults
Habbo Hotel: simple interaction structures (with fantastic attention to detail in iconic representation) supporting human desires. Now in over 12 countries, based on sales of virtual furniture
Singstar: an entirely social game about breaking social barriers and mutual humiliation. Realtime analysis of your voice actually makes you sing worse

Tangible games

EyeToy: brings the viewer into the screen, creates a performative and social space, and allows communication via PS2
Dance Dance Revolution: taking the television into physical space
Nokia wave-messaging: puts information back into space, creates social and performative opportunities (photo thanks to Matt Webb)
Yellow Arrow: puts digital information into city space, a glimpse of how we might have more interaction with situated information in the future

There is a gender thread in all of this: the move towards the social implies a move towards the kind of games and play more often seen in girls.