THE TANGIBLE USER INTERFACE
AND ITS EVOLUTION
Users sculpt and manipulate digital information through
such tangible media as clay, sand, and building models, coupled with
underlying computation for design and analysis.

BY HIROSHI ISHII

Through eons of human evolution, we have developed sophisticated skills for sensing and manipulating our physical environment. However, most of them are not used when interacting with the digital world where interaction is largely confined to graphical user interfaces. With the commercial success of the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows systems, the GUI has become the standard paradigm for human-computer interaction.

GUIs represent information (bits) in the form of pixels on bit-mapped displays. These graphical representations are manipulated with generic remote controllers (such as mice and keyboards). By decoupling representation (pixels) from control (input devices) this way, GUIs are malleable enough to graphically emulate a variety of media. However, when interacting with the GUI world, we cannot take advantage of our evolved dexterity or utilize our skills in manipulating physical objects (such as building blocks or clay models) (see Figure 1).