Designing unobtrusive interfaces with minimal presence
Hyunjung Kim, Woohun Lee · 2009
The vision of Ubiquitous Computing is a world of invisible technologies. Technologies are so woven into the fabric of everyday life that they become indistinguishable [1]. In this paper, we discuss unobtrusive interfaces having minimal presence. By merging into everyday objects and environments, the presence of an interface can be minimized, making our everyday life more interactive without increasing its complexity. To obtain minimal presence, physical plasticity of the interface is considered in the present work. This allows the interface to shift between invisible and visible states; the concealed interface appears when it is put into use and disappears after use. In addition, our recent project, Shade Pixel, is presented as an example of an unobtrusive interface with minimal presence. We also briefly describe a design concept for the interface to provide inspiration for its practical application.