SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award Talk
Hiroshi Ishii · 2019
Today's mainstream Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research primarily addresses functional concerns - the needs of users, practical applications, and usability evaluation. Tangible Bits and Radical Atoms are driven by vision and carried out with an artistic approach. While today's technologies will become obsolete in one year, and today's applications will be replaced in 10 years, true visions - we believe - can last longer than 100 years. Tangible Bits (3, 4) seeks to realize seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment by giving physical form to digital information and computation, making bits directly manipulatable and perceptible both in the foreground and background of our consciousness (peripheral awareness). Our goal is to invent new design media for artistic expression as well as for scientific analysis, taking advantage of the richness of human senses and skills we develop throughout our lifetime interacting with the physical world, as well as the computational reflection enabled by real-time sensing and digital feedback. Radical Atoms (5) leaps beyond Tangible Bits by assuming a hypothetical generation of materials that can change form and properties dynamically, becoming as reconfigurable as pixels on a screen. Radical Atoms is the future material that can transform its shape, conform to constraints, and inform the users of their affordances. Radical Atoms is a vision for the future of Human-Material Interaction, in which all digital information has a physical manifestation, thus enabling us to interact directly with it.