StringTouch is a user interface design exploration translating the expressive resource of string instruments to a new interface morphology. StringTouch transfers the string as a tactile element of interaction to the touch surface, resulting in a tactilely experienceable interface. In this paper we discuss our research through design centered approach, which focused on the exploration of musical string instruments and their translation to the UI context. To investigate this specific design space, we analyzed the systematic and handling of string instruments as well as common HCI principles to develop the interaction concept. The resulting experience prototype demonstrates the idea’s potential for haptic UI design and provides insights into the prototyping process. We present: (1) the investigation of string instruments as a resource for TUI design and (2) the transfer to a generic UI context to inform new hybrid interface morphologies that combine features of tangible, touch, and flexible interaction.
You can find a project video on vimeo.
The project was published at TEI'21 and CHI'19:
Beat Rossmy, Sonja Rümelin, and Alexander Wiethoff. 2021. StringTouch - From String Instruments towards new Interface Morphologies. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 9, 1–10. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3430524.3440628
Beat Rossmy and Alexander Wiethoff. 2019. StringTouch: A Scalable Low-Cost Concept for Deformable Interfaces. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper INT004, 1–4. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3313245