Tangible UIs for media control: probes into the design space

In a student project over the summer of 2004 teams of computer science and product design students worked together to develop new forms of interfaces for media control in living room contexts. In this paper we describe the design process from collecting first ideas of design choices and iteratively evolving (low- fidelity) prototypes to fully functional products, partially even meeting mass production requirements. We discuss how the interdisciplinary collaboration influenced the creative process in such a way, that the solutions were more realistic than purely design- informed solutions and more inspired than purely technology- informed ones. We experienced that the combination of skills lead to a much more focused design process, which produced fully functional prototypes in a short time. The resulting designs include one interface installed in the room, two autonomous interaction objects which can be freely moved around, and a two- handed inter- face. While these are only small spotlights into a large design space, they nicely show the possible diversity. We also learned that fully functional and aesthetically pleasing prototypes can be developed with technologically relatively simple means.