Managing the gap between the physical and digital world through a balance between transparent and performative interaction

Th is paper focuses on bridging the gap between the physical and digital world by creating a balance between performative (learned) interaction and transparent (direct-realism) interaction. The balance between these two types of interactions is also reminiscent of the balance between how people currently interact with digital objects and how people interact with physical objects. This paper does a deep review of the many ways designers, researchers, and even psychologists have studied interaction between the physical and digital world. The project started off with a literature review, the literature review consisted of four sections; a review of related papers and projects, discussion of related theories, my analysis of reviewed literature, and ended with the creation of design guidelines for Near-Field Communication (NFC) devices. The paper proceeds through a hands-on, iterative physical prototyping process in order to develop a prototype that allows our physical interactions to be supported digitally through the use of mobile computing. Wireless communication and metadata are used to create a physical interaction, which is both highly personalized and contextually based in a digital way. An interaction that supports our deeper understanding of the purpose of the interaction, and which also benefi ts from the availability of digital information, which is personal and contextual. Lastly a proposal for a fi nal design for a digital device that will allow the user to bridge the gap between the physical and digital world is described in this paper. This final design incorporates both my analysis of the reviewed projects, theories and literature, and the findings from two rounds of user testing with and iterative physical prototype. This is followed by overall conclusions and suggestions for future work