Colloquium Cognitive Systems

Blended Interaction:
Understanding Natural Interaction in Post-WIMP Interactive Spaces

Harald Reiterer, Human-Computer Interaction Group, University of Konstanz

Abstract. Interactive spaces are ubiquitous computing environments for a computer-supported collaboration that builds on and enhances the pre-existing motor, spatial, social, and cognitive skills of groups of users by augmenting their work environments (e.g., meeting rooms, design studios, or libraries) with interactive technologies. The power of digital computation is blended with natural work practices and collaboration styles and the virtues of physical and digital artifacts are combined in a considered manner so that desired properties of each are preserved and a seemingly “natural” human-computer interaction is achieved. In this talk, Blended Interaction will be introduced as a conceptual framework for understanding and designing natural post-WIMP interaction in interactive spaces. In particular, it uses conceptual integration to explain how the power of the digital world can be blended with the users’ pre-existing skills and practices. Blended Interaction also introduces four domains of design that have to be considered throughout analysis and design of interactive spaces: individual interaction, social interaction, workflow, and physical environment. The framework will be illustrated using design decisions we made in recent projects.

Bio. Prof. Dr. Mag. Harald Reiterer holds a Magister (Mag.) degree (M.Sc. equivalent) from the University of Vienna in Computer Science and Economics. He defended his Ph.D. thesis in Computer Science at the University Vienna, Austria in 1991. In 1995 the University of Vienna conferred him the venia legendi (Habilitation) in Human-Computer Interaction. Prior to his appointment as full professor at the Computer and Information Science Department of the University of Konstanz in 2009, he was associate professor at the Department of Computer and Information Science of the University of Konstanz (1997-2009), assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Vienna (1995-1997), and senior researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (1990-1995) in Bonn, Germany. His main research interests include different fields of Human-Computer Interaction, like Interaction Design, Usability Engineering, and Information Visualization.