Exploring affordances of tangible user interfaces for interactive lighting

Abstract: This paper explores interaction with lighting through a tangible user interface (TUI). In a TUI the physical object and space around it are part of the interface. A subset of tangible interaction called spatial interaction is the main focus of this paper. Spatial interaction refers to translation, rotation or location of objects or people within a space. The aim of this paper is to explore the relation between spatial inputs and lighting outputs based on different design properties. A user test is set up to explore the effect that design properties of a TUI have on the lighting output that participants map to spatial inputs. The results of the conducted user test indicate that communicating affordances to the user is an important factor when designing couplings between spatial inputs and lighting outputs. The results further show that the shape of the interface plays a central role in communicating those affordances and that the overlap of input and output space of the interface improves the clarity of the coupling.