Enduring interaction: an approach to analysis and design of animated gestural interfaces in creative computing systems

This paper provides an interdisciplinary reflection on the nature meaning-making involving users and animated gestural interfaces. In particular, we propose a new model for analysis of creative computing systems incorporating gestural input into dynamically animated interfaces. Our contributions are based on a theoretical framework synthesizing embodied cognition approaches in cognitive science, phenomenology in philosophy, and user interface design in computing. We introduce the term enduring interaction to refer to the phenomenon of bodily and conceptually engaging interaction within constantly changing computational environments. Our construct centralizes the issue of how users' motor-sensory experiences inform their construction of meaning in the design of interactive systems. We argue that creative computing systems, a class of artifacts including types of hobbyist websites, video games, and computer-based artworks, require a new design perspective quite distinct from user-centric interface design approaches focused on productivity-oriented applications. Using examples including outcomes of the Gestural Narrative and Interactive Expression (GeNIE) project (Harrell, PI; Chow and Erik Loyer collaborators) along with existing prevalent, exceptional, or historically significant artifacts, we articulate a continuum of various kinds of engagement, showing design implications of our perspective, enabling users to use gestural interaction (through multi-touch and gyroscope/accelerometer-based input devices) to result in narratively salient, evocative, and even intimate interaction mechanisms in interactive narrative environments.