New Interaction Rituals – getting the playful interfaces we deserve (Julian Bleecker)

Our main point of entry for interaction is the computer keyboard

• The Gilbreths – Frank & Lillian (and a family)
• Started his life as a bricklayer – defined the activity that exhausted people.
• So he went about measuring the work that bricklayers did, to see how to make things more efficient in them.
• (Original Cheaper By The Dozen is a biopic of them.)
• Micro-Motion studies – over 250,000 feet of motion study film.
• Laid foundations of ergonomics and HCI studies.

Based on this work, the Gilbreths’ drew up a list of Standard Motions [1919]:

search / find / select / grasp / hold / position / assemble / use / disassemble / inspect / trnaposrt loaded / transport unloaded / pre-position for next operation / release load / unavoidable delay / avoidable delay / plan / rest to overcome fatigue

• How do humans work as part of the physical interface?
• How was the keyboard designed?
• QWERTY layout – is it designed for efficiency of motion?
• The only real thing that’s changed is the “style” – the form factor, the layout is essentially consistent.
• Specialised keys – apollo 11 keyboard.
• New paradigms can emerge – iPhone, Jeff Han
• Wii is very popular because it’s this braod, playful form of interaction – large strokes, body movement as opposed to finger movement.
• Some physical interfaces actually directly moved hardware in the system. Now, we live in a world of abstractions.
• Non-keyboard interactions – pen-based.
• No exploration of interface is complete without the mouse – “the only real innovation in terms of how we interact with computers”

The Human is a “factor” in the computer interface. The interaction is about what the human sees, hears, and touches.

“Applications and tools define manners” [me] bq. “The interface defines the human” [Paul Dourish]

• Lovely Dan O’Sullivan image – computer as eye, ears, big finger.
• Cognitive Psychology image – “Sparky” – user as a number of processes available to have a little bit of storage, that can be processed in certain way, and so we break down into a state-flow entity.

“I want to move away from the keyboard/display, and towards something that’s personal, and that exhibits part of their own personality.”

• Shrunken computers lead to painful interaction – trying to operate mobile computers leads to contortions, etc.
• Advances in Human Interfaces also are to do withour workspaces.
  • (eg: Aerons in the dotcom boom – flatscreens and Aerons sold jobs to people.)

Efficiency triumphs in the canonical user interface

• How do we create more playful interfaces?
• Through the design of new interaction rituals: playful, not necessarily rational nor utilitarian.

New interaction rituals need new computational practices.

Where do you start?

“games as ways to think of new computational practices”

[on a room of people playing videogames] “this is a weird play experience – sitting watching a limited number of people playing in the dark. This does not seem playful to me”

• Playground activites seem more normal, playful, life-affirming.
• Back to Sascha – “Buttons are sensors for human will”
• Time and motion for playful interfaces
• “Expand” the “button” gesture.

• Time was what Frederick Winslow Taylor was trying to minimise – optimising efficency by making stuff faster.
• Motion was what Gilbreth was trying to cut down.

Think about the larger scale:

• Rather than mm – many m_ to _kms
• Rather than ms – many s_ to _hrs

MobZombies

• (portable game controller – player is player, but running away from “digital” zombies.)
• the human becomes a game controller.
• developing a version of the game for j2me.

Slow instant messaging.

IM and messaging services like twitter/jaiku are making time very efficicent – let me know when a thing is happening (“x is typing a message” lets you even see the future.)

Slow IM – delivers slowly over time, demonstrating comittment through exertion/time necessary to get the messge.

Gesture Tag

Tag gesture – arms outstretched – is very much like key/mouse gesture.

• What would an offline game look like? Digital game played away from screens.
• [Boktai! But not boktai.]
• Gradually expend the button gesture outwards from the tiny scale of the keyboard, to the Wii, to actually going to a physical place (farmer’s market, snowboarding)
• First: build your own game controller: Flavonoids.
• Measure time of day (calendar time), physical movement they’re subjected to, and touch. Human not as eye/finger/ear, but moving through space.

Summary

Computing and the interfaces that mediate our interactions discipline us for particular kinds of social practices. These practices derive from an episteme of efficiency and minimization. But that episteme is pre-historical and due for a polite coup. Interfaces can grow beyond those designed for the bricklayer.