Designing for rich interaction: Integrating form, interaction, and function

Name Joep Frens
Advisors Loe Feijs, Kees Overbeeke, Tom Djajadiningrat

Conventional interactive products employ generalized menu structures and navigation controls to open-up their functionality. In these products information-for-use has become abstracted from human skills. This thesis describes the search for a new interaction paradigm for interactive products, named rich interaction. It takes human skills, that is, their perceptual-motor, emotional and cognitive skills, as a starting point. Applying a research through design approach, five conceptual cameras were designed to explore the solution domain for this new paradigm. One of the proposals was elaborated into a modular, working prototype. The prototype accepts four different interface modules to vary the interaction style of the camera from rich to conventional. In an experiment the interaction styles were compared. The rich interaction paradigm proved to be a viable and preferred alternative to the conventional interaction style. It proved to be indistinguishable from the conventional interaction style in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.