Full Body Interface
2011
Description
An exploration of some interaction techniques for full body interface
Fields
Interaction Design, User Interface Design
  • Full Body Interface
    Text Entry and Menu Navigation
  • My team was approached by (Them Who Cannot Be Named) to help out with some design issues for a full-body interface platform.  This was a rare treat for me to get to work on.
  • Arcade Style:  This was our first thought for dealing with this issue.  The player would “grab on” to these virtual handles to move left and right through the alphabet.  A movement upward would knock a copy of the letter up into the text field above.  We thought of this as an absolute worst case solution.  This particular design goes against one of my cardinal UI rules… NEVER force sequentiality when you don’t have to.
  • "Cactus" Entry:  The name is an allusion to the cactus totem character from the old Super Mario games.  The player uses his or her left hand to select a section of the alphabet to be enlarged, and the right hand to knock out the desired letter.  This solution has a couple of issues with it.  It requires the use of both hands which is both tiring and limiting.   However, it does provide much quicker access than a sequential method.
  • Vetruvian Man:  This style allows the player to access letters very quickly, but again requires the use of both hands.  As the player moves his or her hand through the alphabet, the letters become enlargened.  The player then makes a throwing gesture downward to send the letter to the text entry field.  Unfortunately the hardware wasn’t able to handle the level of precision necessary to make this solution.
  • This interface relies on up and down hand gestures to navigate between categories.  The player then extends their hand forward and moves left and right to spin the blade around and accept a selection within it.
  • For this approach, the player physically moves a step to the left and right to select these categories, then selects a subcategory with a hand.  The disconnect of having the hand in front of the avatar and the selection BEHIND the avatar was a bit much though.
  • This was the next logical step.  The player selects the primary category by stepping on the key, then selects up and down a vertical list using a virtual handle.
  • This was the idea that they ended up liking the best, so my team and I came up with this storyboard to illustrate set up and usage.  Hopefully the visuals speak for themselves.