Traces of contact in a contactless interaction
Seen in San Diego this week. A near-field interaction device, aimed at being contactless… but the patina clearly indicates some contact traces. This pictures shows the paradox between the sort of interaction we are expected to have in the city of the near future (contactless?) and past practices (contact). Moreover, the patina also reveals the messiness of technologies and the inevitable presence of dirt at some point. Digital is physical to some extent.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I’m inclined to think this is less to do with a population’s transition to contactless than the uncertainty of contactless as implemented using a 2-D target. The user can’t tell the maximum distance for the sensor to function, but only knows that the shorter the distance the more likely it’ll work. In most situations, making contact is not appreciably harder than holding off a bit, but has the advantage of maximizing the chance that it’ll work. Such user behavior may never go away.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Nice find. I’m not convinced that we’re expect to have a contactless future, necessarily. Lots of next-technology appears to be still reliant on touch (Nokia’s RFID work for instance). And touch is a very useful transaction, from an interaction design point-of-view, with a lot of certainty (as Michael makes clear). I see what you’re saying about the contactless future though - akin to the almost modernist sense of a seamless future (equally unlikely) - but would love to see more references on that.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Not sure whether the future will be contactless as well, I was only referring to the propensity of certain people (mostly technologists) who think the future’s in there.
There is still an interesting discussion to have in interaction design about the “vocabulary of action” that would encompass all the different types of gestures/parameters such as contact/touch, etc. with different granularities.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:21 am
I’m not sure that this picture shows any contradictions. It says “Hold card here” with fingers pointing and a huge bulls-eye. A reasonable interpretation is to push (or “hold”) the card against the bull-eye. It doesn’t say “Wave card here” or some other wording or illustration that could imply some distance. When designing public interfaces, wording and imagery is extremely important. If there is any possibility of interpreting something more than one way, then some percentage of the population WILL interpret it that way (whether the designers intended it or not).
Also, why it it a surprise that things get dirty? If you assume that hundreds or thousands of people will be using your artifact regularly (even daily), a regular inspection and cleaning schedule is called for if you want everyone to to have a “pristine” experience. My cell phone sits in my pocket with my keys - it’s all scuffed up, but I don’t mind - it still works and has some character, just like this photo.
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:43 am
Good points Henry but “hold” is somewhat ambiguous IMO.
As for dirt, it’s not surprising at all to me, I did not mean that, rather prefer to highlight it because, as you say, it has “some character”.