http://lab.nodesign.net/interfaces
http://www.nodesign.net/interfaces

I like the article and especially agree with your characterization of Merleau-Ponty. I always considered him the optimistic version of Sartre. I also think you are on target in focusing on the failure of computing to disappear, going seamless and invisible. Gestural interfaces like the Wii offer intriguing potential in controlling the seams involved in interfaces. For an overall view of gestural interfaces, particularly in their relation to ubiquitous computing, I’d suggest reading Dan Saffer’s Designing Gestural Interfaces, 2009.

Regards,

Larry

@Luke: while I agree that no one ‘means’ for an interface to be invisible, for designers I’d argue that it has been the default way of thinking for a while, firstly because of the few and rigid methods of interfacing available to us (one eye, two ears, one finger as earlier talked about), and secondly because of the ubiquitous technology movement (microscopic computers everywhere!). I think phenomenology can remind us that that isn’t the case in the same way semiotics reminds us of the difference between sign, signifier and signified.

@Robert: thanks for your observations of using the Wii – I wasn’t aware of the difficulties in using it, though thinking about it that makes sense. One of the problems with digital devices is as you’ve said – they have to be able to incorporate a wide range of actions. In fact, the Wii does have pros and cons – on the one hand, it offers a far richer set of actions and thus mastery, but on the other hand, may unsuccessfully mimic existing metaphors, thus making it ‘unready-to-hand’(a broken tool).
Onto your main question. You’re spot on about it being abut affordance and feedback. (A lot of people think ‘affordance’ comes from Don Norman, but it’s actually from Gestalt psychologist William Gibson). The only thing to watch out for is ‘mental mapping’: there’s a tendency for that term to become visual, metaphorical and generally cerebral. Instead, phenomenology says to focus on what you do rather than what you think. Your example about the door is actually one that Dreyfus talks about (though not with a Wii) – your hand forms the shape of the door without you consciously thinking about it.
Hope that makes sense – your comments have given me a bit to think about.

I mean, if you use a hammer, it can only become part of you, if it affords smashing (the movement you would do with your hand if your hand was hard enough). If a ‘hammer’ would require you to say ‘smash’ to push a nail into wood, it might work – but it would irritate and you would probably not develop a sense of being one with the tool.

The Wii controller on the other hand is an example with a flaw: There are alot of games that really fail at mapping the motions correctly. For instance in the ego shooter Red Steel you have to shake the Nunchuk controller up and down to reload your weapon – that’s OK. But you have to do the same motion to open a door – instead of pushing or pulling which would be a better mapping. So if you are standing in front of a door, but not close enough, you reload your weapon instead of opening the door. Or if you want to pick something up from the ground, you have to move the Nunchuk down. If you get it up again too fast, you reload your weapon instead of picking up things. So even though you start to use the Nunchuck as an extension of your body, it doesn’t work and you always have to think about how you have to move your hand in the current circumstances.

So I think, what you describe is just the result of good mapping, affordance and the right feedback. But as long as we cling to visual interfaces, displaced input devices (mouse/keyboard) or touch screens with no haptical feedback, that’s hard to achieve.