Using personal objects as tangible interfaces for memory recollection and sharing

Mugellini, Elena and Rubegni, Elisa and Gerardi, Sandro and Khaled, Omar Abou (2007) Using personal objects as tangible interfaces for memory recollection and sharing. In: TEI'07. TEI'07: First International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction . Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, USA, pp. 231-238. ISBN 159593619X

Abstract

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) are emerging as a new paradigm of interaction with the digital world aiming at facilitating traditional GUI-based interaction. Interaction with TUIs relies on users' existing skills of interaction with the real world [9], thereby offering the promise of interfaces that are quicker to learn and easier to use. Recently it has been demonstrated [1] that the use of personal objects as tangible interfaces will be even more straightforward since users already have a mental model associated to the physical objects thus facilitating the comprehension and usage modalities of that objects. However TUIs are currently very challenging to build and this limits their widespread diffusion and exploitation. In order to address this issue we propose a user-oriented framework, called Memodules Framework, which allows the easy creation and management of Personal TUIs, providing end users with the ability of dynamically configuring and reconfiguring their TUIs. The framework is based on a model, called MemoML (Memodules Markup Language), which guarantees framework flexibility, extensibility and evolution over time.