The most common method of interaction for us as humans has to be using our sense of touch. I think that explicit tangible control methods such as buttons, switches or knobs are the basis of a lot of interactions for us as humans. Whether it’s something like flipping on a light switch, hitting a power button, or turning up the volume. The basis of a lot of these interactions are with our 🖐️ extremities 🖐️
Intangible interactions are ones that make use of our other senses. Examples could be audio experiences, our bodies being present in a space or what we’re looking at.
Weirdly I can’t think of what my favorite interaction is but one that comes to mind is this video game that I played once at a CMU game design club. In the game you played as a police dog running around to different people in the park. When you ran up to someone a smell was sprayed through the top of the machine and then you had to figure out if the food was foreign or not. I had never seen a game make use of another sense like that and really captured my attention in a whole new way.
Intangible interaction, a multi sensory experience and human perception I believe are all intricately linked. It creates an experience that manages to illuminate these other senses we have to try and take an experience to a different level
For our first assignment we had to take a system that featured an intangible interaction and so we picked an automatic hand dryer. The system features a proximity sensor that gets triggered when you place your hands underneath it. At which point the heater and motor turn on to start the process of drying.
The system featured this IR sensor that detected that it was a human vs just an object placed underneath which makes it efficient and only blow air when it was necessary and not a pre-determined amount of time as a button would. The idea too is to be a cheaper alternative to paper towels as they may have a high impact on the environment and cause extra maintenance through mess and blockages.
Part of analyzing this interaction was we looked at all the problems that the proximity based hand sensor presents. The first major one is that it is a very finicky system and doesn’t activate all the time. It requires a person to constantly move their hands around to trigger the sensor. The sensor also cannot detect how much air it actually needs to blow out. It’s never truly the optimal amount of time. It can be quite loud as well with dryers that can reach sound levels at or over a 100 dBA which can damage your hearing in less than 15 minutes of exposure per day.
I think the biggest thing for me is that it never actually dries my hands and i feel like I have to wipe them no matter what.
For our redesigned interaction we wanted to create a whimsical new interface to trigger the system instead of the finicky proximity sensor. We as human feature our own internal heating mechanism and can create air as we please.
A system that can create a closed loop where hot air is created and then fed through to the hand dryer solves the problem of having to use a proximity sensor and is done when the user exactly wants it. :)