A Call to Arms for Interaction Designers
by DanIf you are anything like me, you’ve at one point or another admired the hell out of the group of interaction designers who, back in the 1960s and 70s, pretty much came up with the modern set of interaction paradigms that we’ve used ever since. Guys like Larry Tesler (cut-and-paste), Doug Engelbart (selecting, point and click, windows), and Tim Mott (the desktop metaphor).
We have a similar opportunity in front of us now, to define the interaction paradigms for the next several decades (at least) in the form of defining gestural and touch interactions.
We need to not only figure out common gestures and how they could work across a variety of devices and environments, but also how to prototype and document those gestures. Now that the Wii and iPhone have introduced more physical interactions to the public at large, it’s time to step up and start making an effort to define and document a common set of movements and motions that could be used for initiating actions across a variety of platforms.
Work has been done already, of course. Robert Cravotta has done a good job with this overview in EDN magazine, and Bill Buxton has started an impressive list of new input devices and technologies. But we need to help create this shift in input devices, not just follow along behind the technology. And if we wait, well, we’ll simply find individual companies (Apple, Microsoft, Perceptive Pixel, etc. etc.) creating their own standards (as is being done now). And while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, one can easily imagine having to remember a crazy amount of movements and gestures for common actions. (”Wait, to turn on the lights do I tap the wall, or wave a hand? Is this an iRoom or MS Rume?”) We’ll get a lot of ad hoc solutions — some of which will be great, some not so much. Standards and a pattern library would help.
What we need is some sort of standards board similar to the W3 or an advocacy group like the Web Standards Project. At a minimum, we need to start collecting the gestural patterns that are emerging, much as Jenifer Tidwell (and others) did for screen-based patterns. Even something as simple as the Ajax Pattern Library would be useful. The Interaction Design Association (on whose Board I sit) would seem to be a likely home and resource for some, if not all, of these things. The question is just having designers engage with the issue.
I’m putting my money where my mouth is and have launched a wiki for collecting gestural patterns at interactivegestures.com. Please contribute to it.
It’s our time, interaction designers. Let’s rise to the challenge and git r done.
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August 28th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Hi Dan,
I put this in the discussion link on the wiki home page:
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I’d like to recommend that a new logo be found for the site graphic… unless sign language/gestural languages are going to be a large part of this discussion. As interaction designers, you should be aware that the hand shapes chosen have (an albeit seemingly random) meaning. (In this case, M W H A G Y O - which I can’t make into any sensible acronym).
I realize that sign hand shapes are a good example of gestures and the sign alphabet font makes a convenient graphic, but to someone who knows a decent amount of sign language, it’s disconcerting.
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Otherwise a great idea, thanks.
August 28th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
[…] in Uncategorized. trackback I’m putting my money where my mouth is and have launched a wiki for collecting gestural patterns at interactivegestures.com. Please contribute to […]
August 29th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Thanks for the pointer to Tim Mott’s site. The video on his homepage is a great bit of history.
Have you had problems with the cultural meanings of gestures varying to a much greater extent then the concepts of point & click, cut & paste, and the desktop metaphor?
September 3rd, 2007 at 4:48 am
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September 13th, 2007 at 7:47 am
You should have seen me on the Virgin America plane pointing and waving the remote around at the touch screen like a Wii… then trying to resize the Google Map on the screen using multi-touch.
September 28th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
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October 1st, 2007 at 6:39 am
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October 3rd, 2007 at 8:47 pm
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November 2nd, 2007 at 6:46 am
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November 7th, 2007 at 5:36 am
Interfaces tangibles : à quoi nos gestes vont-ils servir ?…
Pour Dan Saffer, designer chez Adaptive Path, les designers d’interactions sont en passe de définir les principes fondateurs de nouveaux outils qui risquent d’être aussi importants que ceux définis dans les années 60 et 70 - et que nous…
November 29th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
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November 30th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
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