The growth of intelligent assistants of different kinds is leading to more faceless interactions as we have defined it in our book "Things That Keep Us Busy-the elements of interaction" (Janlert & Stolterman, MIT Press 2017). Below is an excerpt from the book that touches on what this change could mean when it comes to interaction richness and precision.
"Faceless interaction may seem to open up for smooth or analog interaction more than surface-bound interaction does, but perhaps that is a false impression. Spoken natural language has a dominant digital component in the phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences, and so on, although there remains an analog component as well in the form of intonation and prosody (but note that tone in itself can be used for digital communication as well, as in Mandarin where there are four distinctive, semantically significant “tones”). There are also important examples of analog surface- bound forms of expression, such as drawing and painting. The richness that is inherent in analog interaction usually comes at the cost of skill. The ease with which users can handle complex interactions via surface-bound digital expressions—for example, by clicking buttons without a lot of motor skill or precision required—is a strength that faceless interaction may lack. So, even though the richness of analog and faceless interaction is appealing it may also lead to lack of precision and ease.
For instance, playing the electronic musical instrument called the theremin seems to be much harder than playing the violin. The completely free gestures by which the theremin is operated are hard to make precise. To enable precise actions, it seems that some kind of physical support and resistance is required to deliver precise haptic feedback, implying surface- bound interaction.
"Faceless interaction may seem to open up for smooth or analog interaction more than surface-bound interaction does, but perhaps that is a false impression. Spoken natural language has a dominant digital component in the phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences, and so on, although there remains an analog component as well in the form of intonation and prosody (but note that tone in itself can be used for digital communication as well, as in Mandarin where there are four distinctive, semantically significant “tones”). There are also important examples of analog surface- bound forms of expression, such as drawing and painting. The richness that is inherent in analog interaction usually comes at the cost of skill. The ease with which users can handle complex interactions via surface-bound digital expressions—for example, by clicking buttons without a lot of motor skill or precision required—is a strength that faceless interaction may lack. So, even though the richness of analog and faceless interaction is appealing it may also lead to lack of precision and ease. For instance, playing the electronic musical instrument called the theremin seems to be much harder than playing the violin. The completely free gestures by which the theremin is operated are hard to make precise. To enable precise actions, it seems that some kind of physical support and resistance is required to deliver precise haptic feedback, implying surface- bound interaction.
Free gestures seem to leave room for endless variations and subtle nuances, also open for more spontaneous expressions and reactions. At the same time, they are, just as much as the vocal apparatus, a usable basis for creating digital expressions and impressions. Consider, for example, regular sign languages and smaller sign vocabularies developed for specific uses, for example, the hand and arm signs used by military personnel.
Auto-Tune is an audio processor that can correct the pitch of singers sing- ing slightly out of tune, digitizing the pitch of an analog voice. Something similar could no doubt be arranged for the theremin. The use of Auto-Tune has been criticized both for making inept singers sound as if they actually “can sing”—and for flattening, “photoshopping,” the human voice. That you can sing off key shows there is richness of expression (expressive elbow room) but if you don’t develop your ability to control pitch you cannot exploit that richness. It is quite clear that small, tightly controlled deviations from the nominal pitch work as an important expressive device in vocal music, as in much instrumental music.
It seems as if faceless interaction has a tendency to influence the relationship between richness and precision. Whether this relationship also has the quality of being a tradeoff is less clear. What is clear is that any designer making decisions about faceless interactions has to consider the relationship between richness and precision, between digital and analog, in a more developed way than is required for traditional interfaces." (Page 161-162)
Auto-Tune is an audio processor that can correct the pitch of singers sing- ing slightly out of tune, digitizing the pitch of an analog voice. Something similar could no doubt be arranged for the theremin. The use of Auto-Tune has been criticized both for making inept singers sound as if they actually “can sing”—and for flattening, “photoshopping,” the human voice. That you can sing off key shows there is richness of expression (expressive elbow room) but if you don’t develop your ability to control pitch you cannot exploit that richness. It is quite clear that small, tightly controlled deviations from the nominal pitch work as an important expressive device in vocal music, as in much instrumental music.
It seems as if faceless interaction has a tendency to influence the relationship between richness and precision. Whether this relationship also has the quality of being a tradeoff is less clear. What is clear is that any designer making decisions about faceless interactions has to consider the relationship between richness and precision, between digital and analog, in a more developed way than is required for traditional interfaces." (Page 161-162)
Comments