Natural Objects and Gesture Based Interaction: Search for Creativity in Design Education

Natural Objects and Gesture Based Interaction: Search for Creativity in Design Education

Nowadays ubiquitous computing, wearable electronics and multi touch technologies made “gesture based interaction” one of the core subjects of interactive media design field. Lots of designers and researchers are trying to find creative solutions for gesture based interfaces and most of these are based on real life gestures. This will help the users with predictability, WYSIWYG and lead to more usable interfaces. The problem is that the wide use of these standard gestures will be limiting creativity in interaction design. For this reason in the Interactive Media Design Department in Yildiz Technical University, we have been concentrating on imaginary natural interactions for random natural objects with our students since 2008. We asked the students to imagine how a natural object like an aubergine would react if it encounters an unforeseen action, and they developed the actions of the object. 80 students participated in 2 years time and we realised that this study helped the students understand interactivity in a better way, and design authentic interaction solutions in later semesters.