Physical Responses of Dials

Here’s a really nice video of one of the more memorable (for me) presentations at TEI15. The paper/demo was “Comparing Pictorial and Tangible Notations of Force Image Schemas”, by Jörn Hurtienne (Julius-Maximilians-Universität), Diana Löffler (Julius-Maximilians-Universität), Patty Gadegast (Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal), and Steffi Hußlein (Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal).

In the paper/demo, they showed various models for the behavior of a knob to indicate something about the property it was controlling. For example, a knob might resist turning past a particular range, might be attracted to default values or repelled by impossible values, and so forth. The video (see below) shows a series of knobs they built to demonstrate all of these different behaviors. It’s one thing to see them, and another to feel them, of course. But I felt it was a very clear demonstration of how simple controls could be given behaviors that reflect more complex states.  Watch the video and enjoy.

Thanks to Diana Löffler for sending me the video link.

Here’s the paper, linked from Diana’s page. Here’s the ACM archive link too.

Comparing FIS-Dials: a Demo at TEI 2015 from Interaction Design Group on Vimeo.