Body Talk

8/6/2013
Celine Latulipe

After working with interactive displays the idea of using gestures still seems a bit funny. People talk with their hands all the time, point strangers to the subway, and wave to their friends across the street, all without a laugh. Yet I still have to laugh when I find myself waving my arms and stomping my feet in front of a camera trying to get the screen to react. Somehow, it just doesn’t feel natural.

Body-centric communication isn’t a new thing. As I read through the introduction of the paper, I thought American Sign Language served as an apt example of a “vocabulary of hand-shapes that that distinguish between ‘natural’ and explicitly learned hand positions” and a baseball coach in the dugout signaling to his players serves as a fine example of body-centric communication. Each example doesn’t look unnatural, and while they might be eye-catching to the outside observer, one does not feel foolish during each of these activities. Clearly, the topic of body-centric communication is a viable means interaction, and it is a widely used technique.

Restriction of body movement seems to be the key difference; in front of the camera the only inspiration movement that I find comes from a certain inflatable man that draws my eye towards a used car dealership. Something needs to be codified, because if Tom Cruise can look cool moving pictures around in the air while staring at a video on the adjacent wall, then I feel entitled to at least feel that cool when I’m working in front of an interactive display.

Mercifully the data backs me up. “Body Restriction is not necessarily negative. “ Upper body targets are preferred over lower body targets, and the touching the shoulder isn’t all that bad. While cross body positioning is preferred, there is a distinct disadvantage to standing on one foot, something that I feel reinforces the validity of current body-centric communication techniques. The answer I think lies somewhere in between. While speed of motion and accuracy are certainly important we must also come up with a way to interact the feels natural, even if the movements are culturally created and accepted.