Research :: Overview

I believe that computers and keyboard-mouse interactions with a GUI are great inventions, but not for all applications, users and contexts of use. That is why I got so interested in tangible interaction. This (relatively) new field shows potential for making the increasingly digital world hybrid, combining with the physical or material, without loosing the obvious benefits of the digital.
In my work I try to understand how to design tangible interaction in such a way that users can benefit most, physically, mentally as well as socially.
The design interests me at several levels, e.g. the form-giving of the object, the interactions people have with physical artifacts (grasping, picking, building), but also: how to design for user experiences, such as remembering, social interaction, for distributed cognition or embodied interaction.

The approach I use is Research through Design and Interaction Design, with a clear focus on people (formerly known as: users). If you want to know more about this process, I suggest you take a look at the following papers:

Golsteijn, C., Hoven, E. van den, Frohlich, D. and Sellen, A. (2014). Reflections on Craft Research For and Through Design. Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI '14), 26 - 30 October, Helsinki, Finland, pp. 421-430.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2639189.2639194

Hoven, E. van den, Frens, J., Aliakseyeu, D., Martens, J-B., Overbeeke, K. and Peters, P. (2007). Design Research & Tangible Interaction, Proceedings of Tangible and Embedded Interaction 07, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA, pp. 109-116.
Download 1.7 MB [pdf]

Hoven, E. van den (2014). A future-proof past: Designing for remembering experiences. Memory Studies, vol. 7, issue 3, July 2014, pp. 373-387.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1750698014530625

Hoven, E. van den and Eggen, B. (2014). The Cue is Key: Design for Real-Life Remembering. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, vol. 222, issue 2, pp. 110-117.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000172