a connected, computationally controlled stereo might have.
Beyond reacting to your raised hand, it could detect your
presence in the room as a specific individual. It could respond to
your gestures or voice, highlight or hide relevant modes based
on nearby media or subscription status, allow for use of remote
speakers, adapt the volume based on time of day, offer you new
music by your favorite bands, start music playing just before you
enter the house — it is almost limitless to consider the
possibilities.
How should this hypothetical stereo enable and allow for this
expanded set of interaction possibilities? One approach is to put
the majority of interactions on a screen, a tablet on a stand in the
living room. However, as David Rose of the MIT Media Lab
refers to it, the next era of computing is more likely to be full of
“enchanted objects,”^29 where interactions with our products and
environment are more natural, physical, and less reliant on a
glowing rectangle to control everything.
As physical products become increasingly integrated with digital
systems, Interaction Designers should avoid defaulting to a
screen for everything. Computational sensors can be used as
richer and more natural inputs, detecting and making inferences
from changes in light, temperature, motion, location, proximity,
and touch. Output can move beyond a screen with voice
feedback, haptic actuators, light arrays, and projection.
In utilizing this mix of inputs and outputs, screen-based
interaction patterns should not always be translated directly into
the physical environment. Getting a notification on your phone
might be unobtrusive, but having it spoken aloud in your living
room might be less desirable. In the same way, there is a danger
in assuming that a gesture or sensor-based input is necessarily
more natural. If a user needs to develop a new mental model of
(^29) Rose, David. Enchanted Objects: What They Are, How to Create Them, and How
They Will Improve Our Lives. New York: Scribner, 2014.