Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces
between People, Bits and Atoms by Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer

This article shows diverse effort to bridge the gaps between both cyberspace and the physical environment, as well as the foreground and background of human activities. While Mark Weiser suggested Ubiquitous computing, this research focuses more on the physical interface – Tangible User Interface. Current interaction between people and cyberspace are now largely confined GUI and the authors tried to take advantage of natural physical affordances. They showed three prototypes for TUI leveraging different senses for human interaction. I could understand the intention and their great ideas about utilizing background layer for information delivery.

On the other hand, the strength of GUI based information delivery and manipulation is that, it can display anything and flexible. TUI has its limitation with physical size, space consumption and their inflexibility. Above all, would tangible interface really help people to process information effectively in this information overloading era? Of course it will heavily depends on the type of information/contents and users. However, as we can see the focus of design is moving from function to user experience, interface design leveraging multiple senses of human will become more important.

You are not a gadget by Alfred A. Knopf

We are now living in the world of rapid evolving technology. Especially with through the internet and various social media service, we are relentlessly trying to share information and express our selves. However, is this the appropriate state? This article argues about the relationship with human and technologies by describing examples of so called ‘locked-in’ technologies that became our part of life. It is great to rethink about the concepts of ‘files’ that we are using just like air to breathe. How did the technological designs such as MIDI and UNIX shaped our life? The author criticizes those technologies which are not considerate enough for human nature and give us message to think about the upcoming locked-in technological possibilities. With this, as designer, we can rethink about the fundamental design of our daily life technologies.

Sketches are not Prototypes

Sketches and prototypes are both instantiations of the design concept. However they serve different purposes and are concentrated at different stages of the design process. Sketches are usually produced in early stages of design and in this stage, designers can afford to play, explore, learn. In this stage, too much concern for quality may have a negative effect. However, prototypes requires more investment of time and consideration of the cost. This different stages of design process can be describes as funnel. In summary, we must manage the front-end of the process differently than the back-end.

You Make That Sound Like a Negative Thing

In this chapter, the author talks about the concept – design is choice. With similar funnel diagram of previous chapter, the author describes the various reduce and expansion of the ideas. Ultimately, the common thread of these funnel diagram of the design process is that they converge, which means not all ideas survive and my idea could be thrown out. Consequently, people on a design team must be as happy to be wrong as right. A healthy team is made up of people who have the attitude that it is better to learn something new than to be right.

Additionally, usually, the design team represents a number of stakeholders such as design, engineering, product management, marketing and so on. Since each as its own legitimate priorities and they often come in conflict with each other, design is about compromise. I do remember when I was working as a S/W engineer, we had conflict with design team or planning team because of the diverse priorities for each team. Consequently, successful execution of a design depends on communication, and capturing the design rationale is an important component in this.

Annotation : Sketching On Sketches

In this chapter, the author tries to innovate the way designers used to annotate or mark on their sketches. The article shows an example about voice annotation for 3D objects with proper technology. The essential message of the author from this chapter is that we need to apply our design skills and creativity to the design of the tools and environment for the design process. I can agree with this assertion from my experience about the iPhone development. Since, the success of the iPhone and App Store is not only about good design and user experience. Apple also invested a lot of time to design the development tool (Xcode) and UI design tool (Interface Builder) so that developer and designers can work with more convent, intuitive way. I think their design and development tools are the core parts which differentiates themselves from other competitors.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Chameleon : From Wizardry to Smoke-and-Mirrors
Storytelling, Mime, Interacting with Paper

In these chapter, the author describes about the importance of the ‘experience’ in the prototype by showing some examples such as Airline ticket kiosk, Listening Typewriter, Position-Sensitive PDA and Video Whiteboard. Through the high fidelity prototype driven by human being, not by real computer, they could gather perfect user experience data. In this chapter I could see the great two quotes about the engineering in the prototyping process.

Finally, the author emphasize about the importance of the storytelling in the interaction design. It is quite true in these days where companies are focusing on the stories behind the user experience of products.

Through following chapters the author shows various methods of prototyping. Even though these prototypes look crude, we can reveal different elements and possibilities through them. With this article, I could experience various methods of prototyping, and could get good rationale for the process. Since there is no answer to design process, these methods could be used as a stepping stone for developing better and proper prototypes for our design.