From The Feature, Matt Jones:
We're trying to come up with ways to rethink and remap the idioms of computing and communications that have traditionally been tied to the desktop and laptop so that they work better in the contexts in which people use smart phones. Embodied interaction through tangible interfaces is one way to do that. …
We're looking at how touch can be used to execute a number of tasks or interactions so you don't have to switch contexts from the real world to the world inside the screen. …
One thing that ethnographers have observed is that people with cameraphones love to take a picture and immediately show it to the person they're with. It's a moment of weird verification. I take a picture of a place where we just were together and I show it to you straight away. This kind of digital gift giving will become very commonplace--photos but also other content like recommendations they've made around a local area. There could also be interesting overlaps between location-based data and touch technology where your device interacts with the environment. You might touch a bus stop or a museum exhibit and receive a very useful bit of digital feedback from a physical thing. …
Coupling NFC with accelerometers to provide gesture and context input gives very rich ways to overlay digital interactions onto the real world with more physical, tangible, embodied relationship. …
The general improvement in the ability of devices to sample their context is a huge trend. There are quite a few enhancements that can be given to devices that are more subtle than the big headline-grabbing ones like touch technology. For example, if you're walking a little faster, accelerometers might tell the interface to up the font size by two points. Or you might shake the phone to dismiss a call you don't want to take. All of these are about a flip in the design process. We try to look at technology as being in our world instead of us being in its world. Technology should support better real world interactions in tandem with the digital interactions, rather than instead of them.
