Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Affordance-Based Design of Physical Interfaces for Ubiquitous Environments

  • Conference paper
Ubiquitous Computing Systems (UCS 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 4239))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Physical interfaces have been proposed as a way to realize natural interactions with ubiquitous computing environments. The successful design of such interfaces requires design approaches that integrate aspects of our world which are usually treated separately in traditional system development approaches. This paper describes a design approach based on Gibson concept of affordance. We demonstrate an experimental method for studying object affordance and show how it can be applied to the design of a concrete physical interface artefact.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Weiser, M.: Creating the Invisible Interface. In: Proc. 7th Ann. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. ACM Press, New York (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Norman, D.A.: The Invisible Computer. MIT Press, Cambridge (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Ishii, H., Ullmer, B.: Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms. In: Proc. of CHI 1997. ACM Press, New York (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Wellner, P.: Interacting with paper on the DigitalDesk. Communications of the ACM 36(7) (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Ullmer, B., Ishii, H., Glas, D.: mediaBlocks: Physical Containers, Transports, and Controls for Online Media. In: Proc. of the 25th Annual Conf. on Computer Graphics (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Greenberg, S., Fitchet, C.: Phidgets: Easy Development of Physical Interfaces through Physical Widgets. In: Proc. UIST 2001 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Anderson Ballagas, R., Ringel, M., Stone, M., Borchers, J.: iStuff: A Physical User Interface Toolkit for Ubiquitous Computing Environments. In: CHI 2003 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Kaminsky, M., Dourish, P., Edwards, K., LaMarca, A., Salisbury, M., Smith, I.: SWEETPEA: Software Tools for Programmable Embodied Agents. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 1999 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Klemmer, S.R., Li, J., Lin, J., Landay, J.A.: Papier-Mâché: Toolkit Support for Tangible Input. In: CHI Letters, Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI 2004, vol. 6(1) (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Martin, F., Mikhak, B., Silverman, B.: MetaCricket: A designer’s kit for making computational devices. IBM Systems Journal 39(3&4) (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Gibson, J.J.: The Theory of Affordances, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Fjeld, M., Bichsel, M., Rauterberg, M.: BUILD-IT: An Intuitive Design Tool Based on Direct Object Manipulation. In: Wachsmuth, I., Fröhlich, M. (eds.) GW 1997. LNCS, vol. 1371, p. 297. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Fitzmaurice, G., Ishii, H., Buxton, W.: Bricks: Laying the Foundations for Graspable User Interfaces. In: Proc. of CHI 1995 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kitamura, Y., Itoh, Y., Masaki, T., Kishino, F.: ActiveCube: A Bi-directional User Interface using Cubes. In: Fourth International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Engineering Systems & Allied Technologies (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Sharlin, E., Itoh, Y., Watson, B., Kitamura, Y., Liu, L., Sutphen, S.: Cognitive Cubes: A Tangible User Interface for Cognitive Assessment. In: Proc. of CHI 2002 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Camarata, K., Yi-Luen Do, E., Johnson, B.R., Gross, M.D.: Navigational Blocks: Navigating information space with tangible media. In: Proc. of IUI 2002 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lertsithichai, S., Seegmiller, M.: CUBIK: A Bi-Directional Tangible Modeling Interface. In: Proc. of CHI 2002 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Ullmer, B., Ishii, H., Glas, D.: MediaBlocks: Physical Containers, Transports, and Controls for Online Media. In: Proc. of SIGGRAPH 1998 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Rekimoto, J.: Tilting operations for small screen interfaces. In: Proc. of UIST 1996 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Ullmer, B., Ishii, H.: Emerging Frameworks for Tangible User Interfaces. In: Carroll, J.M. (ed.) Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Cohen, J., Withgott, M., Piernot, P.: Logjam: A Tangible Multi-Person Interface for Video Logging. In: Proc. of CHI 1999. ACM Press, New York (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  22. folly. folly new media centre, Last visited (October 28, 2005), http://www.folly.co.uk

  23. Van Laerhoven, K., Villar, N., Schmidt, A., Kortuem, G., Gellersen, H.: Using an Autonomous Cube for Basic Navigation and Input. In: Proc. of ICMI/PUI (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Norman, D.A.: The Design of Everyday Things. Doubleday (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Benford, S., et al.: Sensible, sensable and desireable: a framework for designing physical interfaces, Technical Report Equator-03-003, Equator (February 2003)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Holmquist, L., Redström, J., Ljungstrand, P.: Token-Based Access to Digital Information. In: Proc. of Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Koleva, B., Benford, S., Ng, K.H., Rodden, T.: A Framework for Tangible User Interfaces. In: Workshop Proc. on Real World User Interfaces, Mobile HCI Conference 2003 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Marshall, P., Price, S., Rogers, Y.: Conceptualising tangibles to support learning. In: Proc. of Interaction Design and Children. ACM Press, New York (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Rekimoto, J., Ullmer, B., Oba, H.: ToolStone: Effective use of the physical manipulation vocabularies of input devices. In: Proc. of UIST 2002 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Hinckley, K., Pausch, R., Goble, J.C., Kassell, N.F.: A Survey of Design Issues in Spatial Input. In: Proc. of UIST 1994, Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Sheridan, J.G., Short, B.W., Kortuem, G., Van-Laerhoven, K., Villar, N.: Exploring Cube Affordance: Towards A Classification Of Non-Verbal Dynamics Of Physical Interfaces For Wearable Computing. In: Proceedings of IEE EuroWearable 2003, Birmingham, UK, September 4-5, 2003. IEEE Press, Los Alamitos (2003)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computing Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Jennifer G. Sheridan & Gerd Kortuem

Authors
  1. Jennifer G. Sheridan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gerd Kortuem
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea

    Hee Yong Youn

  2. Graduate School of Information and Communication Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, Republic of Korea

    Minkoo Kim

  3. The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, 113-8656, Tokyo, Japan

    Hiroyuki Morikawa

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Sheridan, J.G., Kortuem, G. (2006). Affordance-Based Design of Physical Interfaces for Ubiquitous Environments. In: Youn, H.Y., Kim, M., Morikawa, H. (eds) Ubiquitous Computing Systems. UCS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4239. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11890348_15

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11890348_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-46287-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46289-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics