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Kinetics Introduction
When we’re working with kinetics it’s important to remember:
- size of physical control vs. input
- size of physical control vs. output
Tactile controls are great for fine control, refinement, or when we need detailed feedback. They an also be used for coarse controls: on/off switches, radio buttons.
Controls can be stylistic or skeumorphic. Why does a Starfleet vessel have touchscreens (LCARS) everywhere but the warp engines are driven by a 20th century ship’s throttle?
Mix mechanical and virtual controls where appropriate
Mechanical controls are better for some uses, though they can’t as easily serve multiple functions. Non-mechanical controls, like touch-screen buttons, are easier to change into other controls but don’t offer the same kind of haptic feedback, making them impossible to identify without looking at them and creating questions about whether they’ve been actuated. Design interfaces with an appropriate combination that best fits the various uses and characteristics.
Types of kinetic output
- vibration
- thumps, pokes
- can we use temperature? something like peltier boards?
- symbols: Braille, history of Braille and printed shapes of letters for the blind in early books
- Braille readers today
Inputs for kinetic
One of the problems with kinetic inputs is errors/noise in the data.
One tool is basic stats, looking at the standard deviation helps us filter data. If you have a temperature sensor for your office that occasionally returns temps below freezing or above boiling, what do you do with that data?
Another tool is smoothing and filtering incoming data
We’re talking about data over time, that gets in to the idea of languages:
- signal encodings like Morse code. People have “accents” in how they generate Morse code by hand, WWI and WWII radio monitors learned who they were listening to. “That’s Hans, he always radios from western German between midnight and 4 am.”
- pattern recognition: what does walk feel like? Run? What do crying and laughing sound like relative to speech?
- earthquake pattern recognition
- meaning generated by content that changes over time, poetry
Haptic/touch vs. objects moving in space
How is touching a person different than moving an object?
Person presses a button vs. wind from a heating vent spinning a fan sensor?
Touch can be wrapped in a robotic device to convey emotion: Paro (wiki) trade show demo.
Mini exercise for Looking Out
Find some examples of data over time to use in accessibility. No weather, no stock prices, will explain why on Thu.