Form, interaction and function : an exploratorium for interactive products

We define an interactive product's behaviour through its form, interaction and function. In current interactive products the meaning of form is separated from the meaning of interaction. We feel that tangible interfacing techniques have much potential to enrich the product's meaning by adressing not only cognitive skills but also emotional and perceptual-motor skills. Too much cognitive effort is needed to understand and use todays interactive products. 'Smart' products do not exploit all of people's skills. Furthermore, product design is too preoccupied with the aesthetics of form. In general little attention is paid to the aesthetics of the whole interactive product including the aesthetics of interaction and the relation between form and interaction. Plenty of tools for the exploration of form exist while there are very few tools to explore the aesthetics of interaction and form. In the development of our design tool we are working backwards from the resulting products. We identify requirements for the tool through a product concept for a digital camera. Finally we present our work in progress on the development of the actual tool based on these requirements