Abstract
The complex, 3D form of the landscape—the morphology of the terrain, the structure of vegetation, and built form—is shaped by processes like anthropogenic development, erosion by wind and water, gravitational forces, fire, solar irradiation, or the spread of disease. In the spatial sciences GIS are used to computationally model, simulate, and analyze these processes and their impact on the landscape. Similarly in the design professions GIS and CAD programs are used to help study, re-envision, and reshape the built environment. However, because of the unintuitive nature of understanding and manipulating 3D forms in abstract, digital space via a GUI , technologies like GIS are so challenging to learn and use that they restrict creativity. The limitations of the technology constrain how we think. Being able to interact more naturally with digital space enhances our spatial thinking, encouraging creativity, analytical exploration, and learning. This is critical for designers as they need to intuitively understand and manipulate information in iterative, experimental processes of creation. With tangible user interfaces (TUI s) like Tangible Landscape one can work intuitively by hand with all the benefits of computer modeling and analytics. This chapter discusses the evolution of tangible user interfaces and the development of Tangible Landscape , exploring its motivations, applications, and future directions. This chapter also describes the organization of this book.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Altman, P. and Eckstein, R. SandyStation [online]. (2014) [Accessed 2015-08-12]. http://en.sandystation.cz/.
Blackshaw, M., DeVincenzi, A., Lakatos, D., Leithinger, D., and Ishii, H. (2011). Recompose: direct and gestural interaction with an actuated surface. In Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA ’11, page 1237, Vancouver. ACM Press.
Coelho, M. and Zigelbaum, J. (2010). Shape-changing interfaces. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 15(2):161–173.
Dourish, P. (2001). Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Fitzmaurice, G. W., Ishii, H., and Buxton, W. (1995). Bricks: laying the foundations for graspable user interfaces. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 442–449.
Follmer, S., Leithinger, D., Olwal, A., Hogge, A., and Ishii, H. (2013). inFORM: dynamic physical affordances and constraints through shape and object actuation. In UIST ’13 Proceedings of the 26th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, pages 417–426, St. Andrews, UK. ACM Press.
Goulthorpe, M. Aegis Hyposurface [online]. (2000) [Accessed 2015-04-10]. http://hyposurface.org/.
Ishii, H. (2008a). Tangible bits: beyond pixels. In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction - TEI ’08, pages xv–xxv, Bonn, Germany. ACM Press.
Ishii, H. (2008b). The tangible user interface and its evolution. Communications of the ACM, 51(6):32–36.
Ishii, H., Ratti, C., Piper, B., Wang, Y., Biderman, a., and Ben-Joseph, E. (2004). Bringing Clay and Sand into Digital Design – Continuous Tangible user Interfaces. {BT} Technology Journal, 22(4):287–299.
Ishii, H. and Ullmer, B. (1997). Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI ’97, pages 234–241, New York, New York, USA. ACM Press.
Iwata, Yano, Nakaizumi, and Kawamura (2001). Project FEELEX: adding haptic surface to graphics. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2001, pages 469–475.
Kreylos, O. Augmented Reality Sandbox [online]. (2015) [Accessed 2015-08-12]. http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox/index.html.
Leithinger, D. and Ishii, H. (2010). Relief: a scalable actuated shape display. In Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction - TEI ’10, page 221, Cambridge, MA. ACM Press.
Leithinger, D., Kumpf, A., and Ishii, H. Relief [online]. (2009). http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/relief/.
Leithinger, D., Lakatos, D., Devincenzi, A., Blackshaw, M., and Ishii, H. (2011). Direct and Gestural Interaction with Relief: A 2. 5D Shape Display. Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, pages 541–548.
Mitasova, H., Mitas, L., Ratti, C., Ishii, H., Alonso, J., and Harmon, R. S. (2006). Real-time landscape model interaction using a tangible geospatial modeling environment. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 26(4):55–63.
Petrasova, A., Harmon, B. A., Petras, V., and Mitasova, H. (2014). GIS-based environmental modeling with tangible interaction and dynamic visualization. In Ames, D. and Quinn, N., editors, Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software, San Diego, California, USA. International Environmental Modelling and Software Society.
Petrie, G. (2006). TouchTable and TerrainTable. Geoinformatics, pages 40–41.
Piper, B., Ratti, C., and Ishii, H. (2002a). Illuminating clay: a 3-D tangible interface for landscape analysis. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI ’02, page 355, Minneapolis. ACM Press.
Piper, B., Ratti, C., and Ishii, H. (2002b). Illuminating Clay: A Tangible Interface with potential GRASS applications. In Proceedings of the Open Source GIS - GRASS users conference 2002, Trento, Italy.
Poupyrev, I., Nashida, T., and Okabe, M. (2007). Actuation and tangible user interfaces: the Vaucanson duck, robots, and shape displays. Proceedings of TEI 2007, pages 205–212.
Poynor, R. (1995). The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. ID Magazine, pages 60–65.
Priestnall, G., Gardiner, J., Way, P., Durrant, J., and Goulding, J. (2012). Projection Augmented Relief Models ( PARM ): Tangible Displays for Geographic Information. Proceedings of Electronic Visualisation and the Arts, London, pages 1–8.
Tang, S. K., Sekikawa, Y., Leithinger, D., Follmer, S., and Ishii, H. Tangible CityScape [online]. (2013) [Accessed 2014-03-27]. http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/tangible-cityscape/.
Tateosian, L., Mitasova, H., Harmon, B. A., Fogleman, B., Weaver, K., and Harmon, R. S. (2010). TanGeoMS: tangible geospatial modeling system. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 16(6):1605–12.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Petrasova, A., Harmon, B., Petras, V., Mitasova, H. (2015). Introduction. In: Tangible Modeling with Open Source GIS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25775-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25775-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25773-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25775-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)