Interactions - March/April 2015

FORUM INTERACTION AND ARCHITECTURE

working across these two fields and how that might work in terms of using interaction technologies to reimagine spatial aspects of our built environment and geographical flows of people, objects, and information.

One example of how interactive technologies can be configured to redefine the flows in a physical environment can be found in my hometown, Umeå, located in the northern part of Sweden. In this town, we have a quite interesting newly opened restaurant. When you arrive at the entrance, you get a special plastic card with an RFID tag to be used during your stay at the restaurant. You can then move around freely to different stations within the restaurant and use this RFID card to order different dishes or beverages; for each order, you swipe this card at the corresponding station. After ordering a dish, you then get another electronic device to bring with you to any available table. When the dish is ready to be picked up, it is communicated wirelessly to this device, which starts to blink, indicating that you can go and get your dish. When you’ve finished eating, you check out from the restaurant by swiping and then returning the borrowed RFID card, then paying for the items registered on the card.

This example not only illustrates the design of an RFID-based order/ payment system; it also illustrates interaction design that is tightly integrated with the architectural program of a restaurant. We can observe how the design interplays with the overall architecture of the restaurant, including the different stations and the spatial layout. We can also observe how this interactive system allows for a unique flow of people, service, and payment within the restaurant, and, further on, how this enables an alternative organization of the staff (a number of different stations, each with its own chef; no waitstaff serving tables, but instead a check-in/check-out counter; etc.).

From the viewpoint of
interaction and architecture, it
should be highlighted how guests
with their borrowed RFID plastic
cards in fact become “mobile
On the empirical side of things,
interest in the intersection of
architecture and interaction design
is growing rapidly. Newly established
notions such as smart cities, smart
buildings, interactive architecture,
and the deployment of public displays
and digital signage are all examples of
an interest in thinking architecturally
about interaction design and vice versa.

But there are also many ways in
which architecture and interaction
design are becoming increasingly
blurred on a more subtle or abstract
level. For example, Wiltse and
Stolterman [ 2] have described how
digital systems can also work as
“architectures of interaction” and,
accordingly, architectural thinking
is currently finding its way into pure
digital design.

In this forum we’re interested in all these different ways in which architecture and interaction design are becoming concerns for one another, and how this changes the world around us. Such changes might be about the deployment of new interactive technologies in physical environments, or digital systems deliberately designed to work as stable structures for ways of interacting (to guide certain behaviors, activities, or flows of information). We’re also interested in lessons learned from working with design projects across these two fields, such as the importance of a precise design language and ways of working with style, formats, and materials (including digital materials). To further explore the intersection of architecture and interaction design, it is important that we also look at the history of design (ideas).

ON DOING ARCHITECTURE
AND INTERACTION DESIGN

Given there seem to be clear advantages to further exploring the intersection of architecture and interaction design, we might also need concrete examples of how architects and designers have already started