Touching, sharing spaces and interacting with the physical and digital world is now more complicated on account of Covid-19. People will need new concepts for physical and digital interactions with products, information, systems and services. Identification and access to safe services and experiences need to be created through voice, gesture, visual and data sharing. Next Generation Interactions will look at what the new design rules for interaction with the world around us might be.
MRes Research
Qinyi Yang, Hongyu Zhou and Yifan Liu
Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. As for the next generation interaction, how we interact with each other and the object we interact with are all entangling with technology. How human interaction has changed over the past has well explained where the future interaction is heading to——digitalisation.
5 Key Issues:
1) Work & Living
The way we work and live is wildly dependent on digital technology. Although it provides us with great convenience, it has also changed our relationship with technology. It is important to consider the opposite of this situation: how will the dependence on our everyday work & living on technology create safety issues for us?
2) Spaces
How we interact within space has been influenced by digital technology, it allows us to interact despite the distance, and we can pass many limitations of physical spaces. Technology provides us with a great opportunity, however, it has also challenged conventional space from many perspectives. It is necessary to consider what is behind this great opportunity, is there any hidden safety issues caused by this trend?
3) Mental Health
Technologies are developed to help monitor our physical health, such as wearable data collection devices that can monitor real-time data. These technologies are also looking to take care of mental health and make emotional tracking viable. But what should be underlined is: Is it really safe for us to be monitored by technology? Would it raise any new mental issues like creating new stress or anxiety that won’t exist otherwise?
4) Human Biological Evolution
Technologies are now applied to our biological body for medical use, the most common practice of it is the prosthesis. But would this challenge the idea of our biological body? Will their people be trying to modify their bodies to overcome the fundamental limitations? We are concerned about what future this technology may bring for us: How would it change our social structure and affect an individual’s safety?
5) Environment: The Digital Reality
Technologies like VR and AR are now working towards providing people with a simulated reality. Virtual environments can bring an enjoyable and exciting experience, but it could also risk putting us in a dangerous position. Will it cause confusion of human identity? Is it safe for us to live in the gap between the artificial world and the actual world? Will it create an escape from the real world?
Relationship of Different Elements
The entangled relationship not only showed how next generation interaction coming to a shape, but also addressed why the safety issues rise from it is important and emergent for designers to look into. By speculating how our lives may be in the future for the five key issues respectively, for the grand pursuit of safety, we expanded several ethical problems and safety concerns under the five umbrellas. Interestingly, none of these issues are an isolated island, they are influencing each other; affected by each other. The discovery of the interlink between these topics helped us better understand the entanglement between us and technology: Technology solves problems but also causes problems at the same time, it is dangerous for our safety if we can only see one side of technology and neglect the others. So for those two polar opposites of technology, it is of great importance to always be suspicious about technology and keep criticising it.
Reading List
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