History of the event
Tangible interaction is a research field addressing areas at the border of the physical and the digital
Since years researchers, designers, practitioners and artists around the world work on the theoretical and empirical foundations, technical frameworks, the realization of prototypes and the conception of interfaces.
The German “Arbeitskreis Be-greifbare Interaktion” is a working group initially founded in 2008 at the TEI conference (Tangible and Embedded Interaction) and now part of the “Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.”. The group unites the multidisciplinary German community of researches, designers, practitioners and artists in such diverse fields as Design, Psychology, Social- und Mediasciences, Engineering and Computer Science. A common goal is to support visibility and to underline the importance of this field. Especially young researchers and Ph.D. students should be able to get an overview of the many multidisciplinary endeavours in this field.
So far the working group organizes two meetings per year:
- A thematic workshop at one of the many German partner institutions
- The annual organizational meeting and theoretical workshop at the German HCI conference “Mensch und Computer”
The French “TANGINT/FR” working group dedicated to Tangible Interaction, is supported by AFIHM (French-Speaking Association of Human-Computer Interaction). It was established in 2011 at the initiative of Prof. Dr. Nadine Couture and Dr. Guillaume Rivière. The main objective of this Working Group is to bring together the actors of the French-speaking Human-Computer Interaction community, but also from interaction design, around the research axis "Tangible Interaction."
The issue is that this community appropriates this topic and become more active on this subject. Thus, we want to increase the international presence and influence of the French-speaking community on tangible interaction field.
The TANGINT/FR working group is opened to researchers, engineers and designers wishing to deepen the theme of tangible interaction by sharing experiences, best practices and national and international community networks. After the work of synthesis by Shaer and Hornecker in 2010, the objective of this WG is especially focused on the definition of tangibility, on the proposition of design patterns to formalize evaluations and tests, and on the combination of tangible interaction with touch interaction on interactive tables.
So far the working group has already organized 4 meetings in France:
- November 24th, 2011, Nice, during IHM'11 conference, “Kickoff meeting, definition of the roadmap”.
- February 16th, 2012, Paris, “Consensus on definitions and terminology francophone”.
- June 7th and 8th, 2012, Bidart, “Day 1. Establishment of a European Network with Arbeitskreis Be-greifbare Interaktion and Day 2. Industrial Case Study ; Two guest speakers: Jens Geelhaar (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany) and Brygg Ullmer (Louisiana State University, USA).
- October 16th, 2012, Bidart, during ERGO IHM'12 conference, “Continuation of the case study session”
In 2011 the German and the French working group agreed to cooperate with the aim to not only support the individual national efforts but to also jointly work on the common goals on the European scale.
A first workshop was arranged at ESTIA in Bidart in 2012.
As a next step to connect the two national communities it is intended to organize a summerschool on “Tangible Interaction from 25th to 31st August 2013 (second choice: October 2013 or April-May 2014) at ESTIA (Institute of Advanced Industrial Technologies) in Bidart South-West of France.
We especially want to address young researchers and practitioners. 20-30 young PhD-Students, and Master-Students and practitioners should meet and get to know each other in an early phase of their research and exchange on research methods. Because we will address the field on a European scale the summerschool is also open for German/French speaking? participants from: Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Switzerland (Poland & Great Britain)
