What is it about?

HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) concerns itself with humans (society) and technology, but misses an important third axis: the physical world, i.e. nature (our surroundings, our environment), made of earth, water, air, etc.. The concept of NUI (Natural User Interface) was introduced by author Steve Mann in 1998 as a way for HCI to connect to this third axis, the create (im)mersivity at the nexus of the social (human), technological (computer), and natural. We therefore connect the concepts of embodied interaction, bodily play (e.g. fun and frolic as in waterhci.com), and NUIs to extend human capabilities (i.e. extended intelligence). An example of this extension of human intellect is through the "Mind-Over-Motor" interaction of a brain-controlled wheelchair that allows a quadriplegic to use brainwaves sensed by an InteraXon Muse brain-sensing headset to control, with only the mind, an electric wheelchair. This mind-controlled motor is an example of a natural user-interface at the intersection of the socio-cyber-physical axes, i.e. involving all three, regarding technology as a vessel of sorts that connects us to each other and to our surroundings, e.g. technology that allows the mind to connect socially, technologically, and physically to the real world.

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Why is it important?

This work is important because HCI normally ignores the physical world. As technologies become more immersive this runs the risk of creating a technological prison of sorts, that encapsulates us while isolating us from our surroundings. Technology that isolates us from our surroundings (environment) will never truly connect us to each other in a meaningful way. Technologies like mind-over-motor are good examples of how we should design technology to connect us to each other and to our environment (physical world).

Perspectives

My own personal take on this is that HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) connects only two of the three axes, and it has been my childhood dream and livelong mission to make technology become part of us, rather than imprison us, .e.g rather than being hunched over computers (keyboard, mouse, etc.) or bending down to look at a screen (like a hand-held electronic calculator) twisting ourselves like a pretzel around the technology, we should twist the technology around us, and thus I invented the concept of wearable computing in my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s as a general-purpose computational (tech), communication (social), and sensing (physical) framework. I regarded technology as a vessel or "vironment" that surrounds us and defines an exteriour (the environment) and an interiour (the "vironment", i.e. what's inside your clothes, namely you, yourself). This vessel or "vironment" (boundary between environment and invironment) thus connects us to each other and to our collective environment.

Prof Steve Mann
University of Toronto

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This page is a summary of: Motor Memory in HCI, April 2020, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3334480.3375163.
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