Computer mouse, touchscreen, voice… Over the history of computing, humans have continued to adapt new ways to use technology, but if it’s the other way around? What if technology adopts human needs? This talk is about how we can redefine relationships between humans and computers in physical spaces. Spatial Interaction is an HCI theme and design framework with the goal of creating natural ways to interact with computers and AI agents in physical spaces. We humanize sensing technologies and machine perceptions to understand user context through a combination of verbal and non-verbal cues such as voice, face, presence, proximity, hand movements, and eye gaze. The presentation will also include case studies with actual interactions currently available on consumer products created through over 5 years of research and product developments at Google. Throughout our research, we revisited the meaning of natural interactions to learn from social interaction, nonverbal interaction, proxemics, and ergonomics to achieve more thoughtful ways to interact with information and technologies.
