Introduction

Abstract

Hiroshi Ishii was the first human-computer interaction (HCI) scientist to design seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment. He and his team were seeking to change the “painted bits” of graphical user interfaces to “tangible bits” by giving physical form to digital information (Ishii and Ullmer, Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI ‘97). ACM Digital Library, pp 234–241, 1997).

We need to distinguish between this purely HCI concept of tangible user interfaces (TUIs) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangible_user_interface) (Ullmer and Ishii, Emerging frameworks for tangible user interfaces. In: Carroll JM (ed) Human-computer interaction in the new millennium. Addison-Wesley, New York, pp 579–601, 2001) and tangible interactive systems (TISs) taking into account the tangibility of systems and not only the user interface enabling interaction with digital information through the physical environment. In addition, TISs are presented as a grounding concept for human-centered design (HCD) and systems engineering. The concept of TIS goes far beyond the concept of TUI and addresses large complex systems. Within the context of aerospace complex systems design and management, I recently proposed the shift from automation to tangible interactive objects (Boy, Ann Rev Control:1–11, 2014). In fact, the concept of “system” is more appropriate than the concept of “object” because it encapsulates objects, processes, and people. Systems can be abstract or concrete and have functions and structures; they include software and hardware. In addition, HCD that puts humans at the center of the design process differs from traditional human factors and ergonomics (HFE) that are commonly taken into account after the engineering process. Tangibility needs to be understood from a physical as well as a figurative point of view.