Hacking the Gestures of Past for Future Interactions

Abstract

This study is an extraction of a wider study which had been executed as a master thesis project that has started during my studies in Malmo University Interaction Design department and continued in Istanbul Technical University Industrial Product Design Department. The study proposes a new "vocabulary" of gestural commands for mobile devices, based on established bodily practices and daily rituals. The research approach is grounded in a theoretical framework of phenomenology, and entails collaborative improvisation workshops akin to bodystorming. The combination of these methods is named as "hacking the physical actions" and the significance of this approach is highlighted, especially as a constituting source for the similar researches in this field. The resulting ideas for gestural commands are then synthesized and applied to fundamental tasks of handling mobile phones and explained with a supplementary video [10].