Digital interaction and tangible experiences: a theoretical investigation

Within other disciplines, the merging of physical form with digital contents and behaviors occurred alike. Product Design increasingly concerns complex computational behavior and designers need to rethink how to make IT-related appliances legible and usable. Design researchers have come to investigate how form and digital behavior can be more closely coupled and how users could interact in richer ways with digital products. Therefore this paper would trace a theoretical dissertation about the evolution of HCI technologies and interaction design approaches focusing on the necessity to return to a more direct connection with “materiality” and perceptual values. Several theoretical dissertations, from the last fifteen years, are here taken in account to sustain this thesis. The cases here analyzed are few representative examples of this approach, including both tangible oriented interaction projects and relational/participatory urban installation experiences.