From HCI to Interaction Design

I just attended  a talk by Dr. Oli Mival; A professor at Edinburgh Napier University; which discusses in general sense the current HCI issues and how research is heading in the future. He also, discusses some of his project; especially ICE project.

Dr. Mival went over his big research project "Interactive Collaboration Environment (ICS)" which is an interactive meeting room designed to help in conducting a more engaging and effective meetings. He discussed design issues and obstacles that faced them when they started the project.  The idea of the meeting room is room equipped with different equipment's to enable participants in their meetings in better a way. The following is a list with what Mival indicated as a components in the ICE:

• Interactive multi touch large screen embedded in the meeting table, which can be controlled by different participants
• A control pannel can be connected with most of the common used devices
• Dropbox can be used to transfer files from and to the system
• Analog switch can turn on/off the whole system
• Three different cameras distributed around the meeting room to help when video conferencing with others
• Interactive touch screens placed on the walls for discussions which needs participants to stand and explain

One fact about this project, that I liked was the use of analog switch to turn on/off the system was a cleaver idea. I've been in the user shoe and I know how frustrated are users when they get around this type of systems.

Dr. Mival also indicated that spaces and places should be included in any user interface design. He closed his talk by indicating that now as the HCI research and industry is getting advanced, any further work in the interface design should consider all the following factors: people, places, activities, context.

Interesting facts and issues raised by Dr. Mival were:

• HCI and Interface design should adapt people tasks not the other way around. He gave an example about their ICE design, the multi-touch screen in the table was designed to handle mugs, laptops, etc in top of them. He mentioned that, you can't ask people not to bring coffee or tea in their meetings!
•  Hands wave gesture interfaces are not usable. Simply, user will get tired after a couple of minutes.

Here is a video about the ICE system. I thought it would be cool to share it with you: