Tangible interfaces in perspective: Guest editors' introduction

The use of physical objects as manipulable representations of information extends back to the dawn of civilization. Early research efforts toward tangible interfaces appear to have developed in parallel at several institutions. Fishkin has created a framework from the perspective of human-computer interaction, which offers researchers new tools for describing and contrasting tangible interfaces. At an editorial meeting, all papers were discussed at length by the three editors. In some cases, this meant choosing among submissions that were similar in scope, and picking the one that best supported our intentions for the issue. The paper by McNerney takes the Slot Machine as a departing point, and discusses an evolution of education-oriented tangible interface research at the MIT Media Lab. And Binder et al. discuss a series of efforts where tangible interfaces have been integrated into the working environment of students, under the auspices of a European project with partners from several countries.