From GUI to TUI

Digilicious is a Chilean Blog about design. This week a very interesting article about User Interfaces written by Alejandro Pantoja, LEPLANCTON, was published there and I wanted to share it. So, here's the English Version of it :)

We're all familiar with the concept of GUI (Graphical User Interface), but few have heard about the TUI concept, or Tangible User Interface. What's the difference between both? What implications does this change has on interaction experiences?

Taking into account the classification of metaphors for the interaction developed by Carlos Scolari, we have that, in the beginning, a person interacted with the computer through a dialog between both of them, given through a specific syntax. This conversational metaphor allowed user to give commands to the system in order for it to give a response. Sadly, only users who knew that specific language could do so. Did any of you used DOS? For this reason, technological and conceptual research was made, in order to democratize interaction. For this small step to men (big for the humanity) we have to thank Douglas Engelbart, who, at the Standford Research Institute, invented the mouse. From this moment, we leave aside the conversational metaphor to go to the instrumental metaphor. At the Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), Engelbart concepts are developed, through Tim Mott and Larry Tesler. This way, the base of the instrumental metaphor is developed: WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse and Pointer) and the desktop metaphor is implanted as a way to translate daily actions to real life and simplify interaction. This is how, in 1973, the first personal computer using a Desktop and a GUI was born: the Xerox Alto. Then, Larry Tesler leaves Xerox PARC and joins Apple and, with Bill Atkinson, createa Lisa in 1980, considered the forerunner of Macintosh, where drop down menus and dialog boxes were included. We're already familiar with the rest of the story, a process of development of the same concept by the two giants of informatics, Apple and Microsoft, where basically, the desktop metaphor, icons and windows continue to be elements of interaction and the only thing that changes is the skin. This is why the next step is so important to the development of interaction. This step is the one that allows to rethink interaction and change the paradigm of the subjects immersion into a virtual environment to the virtual object's immersion to a real environment. This is how TUI, or Tangible User Interface, was born, as the way of beeing able to manipulate an object as a real representation of a virtual object. Let's see the differences between both concepts through his graphics based on Hiroshi Ishii's "Designing Interactions" graphics.

On the GUI graphic, we can see how the Mouse becomes the remote control device of an intangible representation generated by a screen or a projector. Basically, the Graphic User Interface provides us different components as windows, menus or icons but which representation is intangible, they are represented to the screen pixels: intangibles. In order to control those representations we need remote devices like a mouse or keyboard.

On the TUI graphic, we can see the key idea of the Tangible User Interface: to give a physical form to the representation. The advantage of this model is that the control is the object itself, manipulable, dragable, without needing another device. In theory, this model is perfect when both representations are tangibles, the manipulable object which makes the data enter the computer, and the resultant object of the process of information analysis. But technology still doesn't allow to easily modify the shape or colour of this object. This is why today's TUI doesn't fully work with the tangible representation of the manipulated object, and the result of the computing process is intangibly represented through a projection, or an immersive device such as 3D glasses. In short, giving a physical form to information allows to have multiple forms of control, and control devices simultaneously, contributing to collaborative work situations.

The concept, and the first works around this kind of interface come from Hiroshi Ishii at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), who is in charged of the Tangible Media Group. As interface designers, is important to stop working just in interaction surfaces, to start to worry about all aspects behind it, specially thinking about the user experience. Lets remember that the best experiences we can have are those that allow us total immersion in an environment, achieving to stimulate all of our senses.

Bibliography:

• “Designing Interactions”, Hill Moggridge. MIT Press, 2007.
• “Hacer Clic, Hacia una sociosemiótica de las interacciones digitales”, Carlos Scolari. Editorial Gedisa, 2004.