Alternative interaction techniques

With an increase in the range of consumer products that incorporate some computer processing (or intelligence) comes a corresponding increase in the types of interaction that one can expect to use in order to engage with such products. On the one hand, this might imply greater use of the manual controls found on domestic products. However, the increasing complexity of domestic products might lead one to assume that such controls are already outmoded. Moving beyond manual control, one could conceive of various forms of keyboard for use on such products, or indeed the use of speech. These forms of control have already been dealt with in Chapter 7. In this chapter, some alternative interaction techniques will be considered. The intention is not to provide an exhaustive review so much as to overview the scope of such techniques.Baber (1997) has argued that it is necessary to think of interaction devices as 'tools' (i.e. physical artefacts which can be manipulated and which can convey meaning in much the same way as handtools). He concludes that 'interaction devices can be developed as significant components of the computer systems, not only acting as transducers to convert user action to computer response, but communicating all manner of feedback to the user and support a greater variety of physical activity' (p. 276). The point of this statement is that one should be able to develop means of interacting with computers that extend beyond the conventional keyboard/mouse concept and which incorporate everyday objects. In the following section, some examples of how this might be achieved will be considered.