Analog Interaction Design: Handles, Motors, and Instant Lover
In one of his classic lectures on interaction design, Bill Verplank distinguishes handles (for continuous control) and buttons (for discrete control). He's a big fan of the former, along with motors, haptics, and all manner of musical instrument controllers. Within minutes of trying James and my force-feedback radio he had about a dozen suggestions, all excellent. Using his force stick [pdf] could be mistaken for plucking a real guitar string – until, of course, he changes it to feel like beating a drum or ringing a bell.
What's striking about Verplank's work, though, it is uniqueness. Few of the interaction design or physical computing projects I've seen (in my two years at Interaction Ivrea at least) have such a rich, physical interface, or what you could call analog interaction design. One great exception is this project: the instant lover. In a few days, with a single servo-motor (and another to ring the glass), Alejandro, Dana, Chia-Ying, and Mike created an evocative, fluid behavior. It's not interactive but it exemplifies qualities that should be more common in interaction design: non-screen, non-LED output and the use of materials to provide the texture missing in digital devices.
Blinking a LED is easy enough to be considered the «hello world» of physical computing, reading a pushbutton isn't much harder. We need to explore more complex forms of input and output.
Some other examples of analog interaction design include: String Thing by Ben Dove and Soft Interfaces by Akemi Tazaki. Any more?