As the number and variety of gestural interface applications has exploded, design researchers have been focusing more on the physical aspects of human-artifact interaction. The potential benefits of gestural interfaces - simplicity, ease of learning, memorability - are valuable to end-users, but also provide an emerging opportunity and challenges for the researchers who study them (see Dan Saffer's presentation on researching interactive gestures).
Typically design research documentation is a cumbersome process of rapid note-taking and rigorous reviews of video recordings. Over the years I have identified and discussed tools and technologies that can improve the efficiency of design research data collection. And I see the next wave of user research tools not only focusing on physical interaction, but actually enabling the design researchers to document behavioral observations through their own physical interactions.
Case in point - at Bresslergroup we have been trialling the Nintendo Wiimote controller (pictured above) in conjunction with Techsmith's Morae software as a wireless data tagging system. Wireless data tagging is an activity that allows one or more researchers to mark key observations, synchronized in real-time. In fact, wireless tagging was a key element of our FieldCREW concept research tablet (concept tagging device pictured below).
As part of our proof-of-concept for FieldCREW, we have configured the various buttons and controllers on the Wiimote to correspond to task-specific behaviors. For example, the directional controller can correspond to the direction of an observed person's physical motions, while the other buttons can be mapped to specific tasks or activities. As a result, a skilled "tagger" can unobtrusively document events in real-time with a single-hand and without interrupting their line of sight to the activity (versus having to look down to write notes). All of the tagged events become markers corresponding to a synchronized video-recording in Morae.
This is more than a gain of efficiency or convenience. It is an enhanced means to observe and record physical behaviors, as it changes the role of the observer from a somewhat passive information gatherer to an active, real-time participant, even giving game-like qualities to the research tasks (e.g. when the user moves left, I push left).
I'll be discussing and demonstrating this, as well as other methods for physically documenting physical behaviors at the upcoming Design Research Conference.
