While I found the reading’s focus on human capabilities to be a very insightful perspective concerning interaction design, I found its focus on the use of hands to be both limiting and outdated.
In the past several decades, technologies have developed with the consideration of hands as human’s main ‘capability’. We type, swipe, scroll, hold and even move devices with our hands in order to generate a given output – this has become second nature to us.
However, I believe that the future of immersive and seamless human-centred design revolves around moving beyond this. I feel that the utilisation of other physical human inputs can be used to maximised interaction design, both from the perspective of immersion and ease of use.
An example of this being used to provide seamless experiences for users is the use of facial recognition to unlock smartphones. By taking advantage of the front camera’s natural position when a user picks up their device, designers have been able to eliminate the tedious action of typing in a passcode or scanning a thumbprint.
Conversely, full-body immersion has been utilised in game consoles such as the Xbox Live and Wii. In these cases, sensors were put in use to revolutionise how players interact with games, effectively deconstructing the notion that playing video games is a lazy and inactive process. Despite the minimal success of these consoles, the application of full body immersion seen in them can be used as a reference for other interactive experiences such as installations and performances.