COVER STORY
physical design, mechanical
engineering, electronics, and
programming. Already they are
in demand, precisely because
they transgress the traditional
disciplinary boundaries that
characterize (and limit) our
schools and firms today. Their
diverse range of ability is what
enables them to be creative in
this new design space. As firms
embrace the new integration of
form and computation, tangible
interaction designers will play a
more prominent role in product
development, bridging the gulf
between traditional design and
programming.
The growing tangible interaction community meets at several
conferences that explore design,
technology, and societal impact.
DesForM (Design of Semantics
of Form and Movement) gath-ers academics and professionals
in a forum that embraces the
diversity of design approaches.
It focuses on the meaning of
products and how designers
communicate information, functions and ideas to enable these
to be perceived and understood
by people in their everyday
lives. TEI (Tangible, Embedded,
and Embodied Interaction) is a
demo-friendly conference about
human-computer interaction,
design, interactive art, user
experience, tools and technologies. And of course there’s
CHI, which in 2009 showcased
tangible interaction design
with a new “Design Vignettes”
venue. Other pertinent conferences include DIS (Designing
Interactive Systems), UIST
(User Interface Software and
Technology), IDSA (Industrial
Designers Society of America),
and DUX (Designing for User
eXperience).
The first schools to embrace
tangible interaction design in
the 1990s included the Royal
College of Art, the MIT Media
Lab, and NYU’s Tisch School of
the Arts. Programs have since
sprung up around the world.
Perhaps because of the inher-
ently interdisciplinary nature
of tangible interaction design,
many universities teach this
form of design in a distributed
manner across schools, depart-
ments, and programs. For
example, Carnegie Mellon’s new
master’s of tangible interaction
design program leverages the
university’s strengths in design,
robotics, and engineering,
human-computer interaction,
architecture, and the arts.
tion design daring. Yet it is the
seamless integration of form
and computation that makes it
magical. We must keep the thrill
of experiment while evolving
design vocabularies and processes that integrate code, product form, behavior, information
and interaction. In this way, we
will enable a new genre of products to achieve relevance and
connect with people in meaningful ways.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Mark Baskinger is an associate professor in the
School of Design at
Carnegie Mellon University,
where he teaches courses
in industrial design with an emphasis on
form and interaction. His interests include
exploring new paradigms for interactive
objects and interpretive environments, and
methodologies of design drawing and visual thinking to promote collaboration. An
international speaker and workshop leader,
Baskinger also conducts “Drawing Ideas®:
A Field Guide to Visual Thinking” courses in
conference and business contexts where
he makes design drawing methods and
visual thinking techniques accessible to a
broader audience and demonstrates strategies for using sketching to foster collaboration in design processes. Parallel to his
appointment at Carnegie Mellon, he co-directs The Letter Thirteen Design Agency
( www.letterthirteen.com).
Toward a Tangible Future
We have painted a rosy view
of tangible interaction design,
emphasizing two different and
equally important aspects of
the field. On one hand, tangible interaction designers are
experimenters, playing purposefully in a new space of form and
computing. The vocabulary of
form, function, and behavior of
computationally enhanced products is still very much under
construction; this yields some
work that is an engineering triumph yet awkwardly made, or
work that is elegant and clever
but without apparent function.
On the other hand, tangible
interaction designers aim to
make things that elegantly integrate form, computation, and
behavior. Bringing these two
together is the challenge for
individual designers, and also
the challenge for the field. The
spirit of experimentation with
new materials and processes is
what makes tangible interac-
Mark D. Gross is a profes-
sor at Carnegie Mellon
University’s School of
Architecture where he stud-
ies and teaches tangible
interaction design. His MIT
January + February 2010
DOI: 10.1145/1649475.1649477
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00
