Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

Computer interfaces often make large demands on users’ attention, both to request and gather input and to provide output (feedback). In this position paper, we propose a new style of interaction that minimizes these attentional requirements while still providing support for rich input and output. Physiological data is used to drive the execution of a program and direct its behavior, while mounted mobile tactile displays provide granular application feedback at an appropriate level of intrusiveness for the given context. We present evidence for the effectiveness of our interaction approach from the literature, and describe several existing and potential applications including smart portable audio players and spatiotemporal guidance systems.