HAPI Touching People
Camille Moussette's degree project at Umea Instiute of Design.
This project is carried out in collaboration with Nokia Reasearch, Los Angeles.
Over the years, the connections and interactions with our environment and our peers have drastically increased both in number and in complexity. People now use far more systems, devices and services than before to work and live fully.
Our professional and personal activities are neither simple nor trivial, they are made of rich and complex sensorial experiences, spanning on different stimulus and modalities. However, up to now we usually experience these systems and tools primarily via the visual and auditory channels: prints, static and dynamic displays, music, voice transmission, etc. Very little meaningful interaction is accomplished across the other senses and modalities, despite decades of technical and technological advances.
This degree project aims at exploring and testing new interaction techniques using the touch sense in particular. The skin is a very complex and refined organ. It offers extreme sensitivity and tremendous capabilities as a medium between the outside world and us. The experience of touching or feeling is something that is very hard to match across other senses.
Along the exploration of haptic interfaces and techniques, this project is also framed under the mobility context. Being mobile and mobility impose, I think, very interesting challenges for interaction design. It blurs the idea of context, situation and use. Everything is not so precise, defined and predictable. It put the emphasis on the user and its needs, actions and experiences. Hardware, software and everything in between have to follow and keep up with the users, as they move and evolve in the complex world.
During the next 20 weeks, HAPI will be about exploring and developing new sensorial interaction techniques for mobile devices based on the touch sense. There will be some talking and writing about touch and mobility, but I would like to bring the discussion to the next level where people can experience the 'real' thing. I definitely plan to build low-fi and hi-fi prototypes to explore, share, evaluate and exchange my ideas. Words and images just cannot convey how touch feels: touching is believing.
I decided to setup this website as a living library of my work. In doing so I explicitly want to open my project with as many people and collaborators as possible. Feel free to contact me at any time for sharing, discussing or just exchanging toughts and ideas about the topic.
Camille Moussette
camille at guchmu dot com
31 Jan 2007
Umeå, Sweden
updated 13 May: changed project's name