We live in a society where interaction with products is mostly mediated by GUIs, button arrays, touch screens and, more recently, gestures and speech. Efficiency and multi-functionality are becoming increasingly common [8]. Due to the flexibility of these interfaces, their functionality tends to expand limitlessly, leaving the user with meaningless generic action possibilities and overwhelming amounts of features. The multi-functionality of these interfaces has its benefits, but at the cost of a fit with the context-of-use, thereby disrupting the use flow. What’s more, interaction with these interfaces relies almost completely on cognitive skills [4,6,12]. In contrast, I think the context-of-use is an essential element for good design. I am interested in designing immersive experiences and interactions that take advantage of human skills beyond cognition. This means that interaction fits the context-of-use and seamlessly integrates into the use flow, thereby becoming more meaningful. This relates to being “ready-to-hand”: the product moves to the periphery of attention while it is being used to complete a (attention demanding) task [5,7]. My approach to achieve this is combining technology with creativity to break free from generic interaction paradigms (pressing buttons, rotating dials, and tapping displays) and create new, innovative action possibilities. For instance, using AI to convert writing to text prevents the need to pull up a keyboard during sketching (figure 1), or fingerprint and face ID for seamless, yet secure, unlocking a device.
Developments in AI are especially valuable, as they can be used to accurately interpret nuanced and complex contexts that the interface can adapt upon, making it possible to create a fit in a dynamic context (see Apto, my FMP project (.pdf)) (figure 2 & figure 3). Other interesting domains are tangible and embodied interaction, since we can build on the meaningfulness of feedforward and affordances [9]. This makes the interaction more intuitive and available for use in the periphery of attention [1,9]. In addition, the physical world allows for expressive and multi-sensorial interaction (such as weight, sound, haptics, texture) that enrich the experience by addressing our perceptual-motor -and emotional skills [5,12].
In short, I believe designers distinguish themselves from other engineers by creating value from bridging people and technology within a certain context. Fundamentally, they ensure the goals of a user match the product's functionality and that the functionality is accessible through a usable interface. Altogether, this creates a good fit between the product, user, and context-of-use (figure 4). Additionally, I think designers are responsible for shaping the application of new technologies, such as AI. Designers can build the foundation for innovative applications of (new) technology that considers the needs of users and context first, instead of being technology driven.
