Providing Dynamically Changeable Physical Buttons on a Visual Display - CHI '09

Chris Harrison, Scott Hudson

http://chrisharrison.net/projects/pneumaticdisplays

Physical buttons have the unique ability to provide low-attention and vision-free interactions through their intuitive tactile clues. Unfortunately, the physicality of these interfaces makes them static, limiting the number and types of user interfaces they can support. On the other hand, touch screen technologies provide the ultimate interface flexibility, but offer no inherent tactile qualities. In this paper, we describe a technique that seeks to occupy the space between these two extremes offering some of the flexibility of touch screens, while retaining the beneficial tactile properties of physical interfaces.

The outcome of our investigations is a visual display that contains deformable areas, able to produce physical buttons and other interface elements. These tactile features can be dynamically brought into and out of the interface, and otherwise manipulated under program control. The surfaces we describe provide the full dynamics of a visual display (through rear projection) as well as allowing for multitouch input (though an infrared lighting and camera setup behind the display). To illustrate the tactile capabilities of the surfaces, we describe a number of variations we uncovered in our exploration and prototyping. These go beyond simple on/off actuation and can be combined to provide a range of different possible tactile expressions. A preliminary user study indicates that our dynamic buttons perform much like physical buttons in tactile search tasks.

Harrison, C. and Hudson, S. E. 2009. Providing Dynamically Changeable Physical Buttons on a Visual Display. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Boston, Massachusetts, USA, April 4 - 9, 2009). CHI '09. ACM, New York, NY.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• pneumatic
• tactile
• multitouch
• deformable
• dynamic
• changeable
• physical
• buttons
• controls
• visual
• display
• interface
• motor
• human
• computer
• interaction
• carnegie
• mellon
• university
• CMU
• hci
• hcii
• chi
• chris
• harrison
• scott
• hudson

[MatthewAT385]

This is an experimental and prototyping project, so it would be smart to look at it in that way. And, do not be so harsh.

Idea and interest for something different/new is always good.

People who say that there is no need to search, or upgrade existing technology for something new, are not so very bright people.

And in every problem in applicability, are usually money issues.

Just want to say, good job.

Best regards,

Matthew

[AerialTheShamen]

As soon that touch screen goes in series on smartphones, surely the first commercial apps for it will be unavoidably nude girlie picts with the nipples sticking out the more you tickle their breasts. ;-)

(But no joke, the invention makes sense.)

I still remember those foil keypads on cheque card calculators and ZX81 homecomputer from 1980th; when several keys were pushed in, others bulged out inflated because certain key groups formed together a sealed air chamber.

[7ty714]

Screw touch-screen, this is the future of interfaces!

[almagenes]

1:52 LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESHHHH

[Kookas]

@HavePride1 Actually, it's not. The upcoming smartphones seem to be all about the AMOLED, S-AMOLED and OLED tech, which allows for more manipulation of the screen.

[djsmithy]

This is something i always dreamed about,

movable buttons for a midi controller or whatever.

Now if there was only some way of having movable Knobs, (pots/encoders), to go along with it, it would be perfect.

[HavePride1]

@ReikaiDemon all thanks to LCD technology

[kidluna]

I projected this behind me while I DJed thanks!

[ReikaiDemon]

Pretty soon, we will no longer have screens that use graphical video to display guis. It will be a display of chromodynamic nano technology that will change shape and color with virtually no latency. Heck, the entire case itself can be a display, and change color, shape and pattern. Textures can be emulated, buttons can be made, you will feel everything

[bluesrunthegame]

That's really cool. It just needs a little crunch.