Effects of Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) in In-Vehicle Information Systems
T. Hoff, M Alsaker, Cato Alexander Bjørkli · 2002
We have, within last years, witnessed horrifying tragedies within transportation domain. Planes fall down, trains crash, boats sink, and car accidents are one of most frequent causes of death throughout world.What is more, technology seems also to fail in settings that are more mundane. In his book the trouble with computers: Usefulness, usability, and productivity, T.K. Landauer shows that productivity has, within western world, decreased by about 50% from period 1950-1973 to period from 1973 to 1993, and claims that this effect is mostly due to introduction of technology. Even closer to home, technology is still anxiety provoking for most people. One of many everyday observations to support this fact can be seen at airports. Have you wondered why most people line up, even for hours, without daring to go near automatic check-in machines?What has become of grandiose promises from heydays of artificial intelligence? What happened to mind-machines of Newell and Simon? Where is HAL 9000? The distance between massive technology positivism observed in west, and contemporary role of technology in society, is, I believe, one of largest paradoxes of our time.What is particularly interesting to note, is that parody of AI of 60s, seems to be recycled every now and again, both within entertainment, financial world, and within academia. At turn of century, we have seen popularity of movies like The Matrix, we have seen high hopes become sober reality at NASDAQ, and reductionism of Newell and Simon is alive and well, in disguise of magic buzzword connectionism. Universities around world are now buying MRI – scanners on thousands. We are, yet again (!), on verge of discovering mysteries of mind.The slogan Vorsprung Durch Technic used by Audi displays something that lies deep within western mind, namely tendency to define ourselves and our culture in terms inherent qualities of technology; precision, logic, rationality, reliability, punctuality, determination and power. Technology is, in many respects, totem of western culture. Maybe this thesis should have been about Techno-Totemism. But it is not.This thesis, on other hand, attempts to explore what technology might have looked like, had it not been for techno-totemism, i.e. prevailing idea within western culture and sciences, that humans are literally machines. This notion makes engineers design technological products as if humans actually were machines, or worse imperfect machines. The imperfect machine metaphor leads directly to notion of error, which is often used in a particularly stupid fashion.In this work I lean, on contrary, on aspects of human cognition that are not machine-like whatsoever, and advocate a change in design focus, from an emphasis on technology to an emphasis on ecology. I have attempted to present my programme positively; that is, to give indications on how, in practical, real life settings, such an approach might be carried out. At certain points, however, it has been necessary to point out difference of my approach from traditional cognitive-based Human Factors tradition, to make my points explicit. I apologize to cognitivists and human factors specialists for occasionally making a straw man of their theory. There are many excellent contributions made by these traditions, which are not reflected in this thesis.