As interaction designer we always deal with future. We try to be up to date to the new technology, we try to innovate the market and we often end up designing web services and I Phone apps. Our cultural references are Facebook, the Apple Store, Skype, IKEA, RFID technology. One of our obsession is ubiquitous computing.
Recently we attend the Tangible User Interface class at CIID: one month to design an interactive product or artifact around the theme of working at home. Many of my classmate as well as me and my teammate, Laura, we end up designing something that have a strong haptical appeal while the technology we used to make it works is usually hidden, embedded inside carefully crafted layers of wood. What I saw at the final exhibition was something close to a paradox: high tech artifacts that have the appeal of no-tech consumer products.
Few days ago I stumble upon an article about the so called Mujicomp a new concept introduced by Matt Jones during the ”new digital spaces” conference at Technoarkin Sierre, Switzerland. Basically the Mujicomp are a new category of objects within the context of ubiquitous computing: technological artifacts should “become sexy and desirable… able to be appreciated as cultural design objects rather than technology… they should be tasteful, simple, clear, clean, contemporary, affordable in order to be invited into the home“.
That seems to perfectly match what our final designs looked like. But what is that we found so appealing in this beautifully crafted interactive object? Are we somehow so sick about this hyperconnected and hypertechnological world that when it comes to Tangibility our answer is embed the technology, hide it in order to rediscover ergonomic and haptics? Our answer is for solving our problems and maybe is an answer to a need of simplicity.
The Tangible User Interfaces we are familiar to in real life are stuff like a mobile phone, a touchscreen, the mouse and the keyboard.. All those object are maden in plastic and glass. They’re cold, they’re complex, they hardly gain a patina over time. They’re piece of technology, and this is what is stated in the design of the object itself. But what if we can design tech stuffs that are warm, appealing, that can invite the user to touch them and play with them; stuff that are made with nice wood, ceramic, stone, fabric… ? What if we can design technological objects that can gain a patina, that can even get better with use, while getting old?
A lot of questions and few answers.. Let’s see what we’ll build next time.
