Creating Affording Situations with Animate Objects

In this paper, we report the design, development and initial evaluation of the concept of animate objects (as a form of Tangible User Interface, TUI) to support the cueing of action sequences. Animate objects support user actions through the provision of affordances, and developments in actuator technologies allow those devices to change their physical form. Each object communicates (in a small-scale ‘Internet of Things’) to cue other objects to act, and these, in turn, provide cues to the user. The set of cues creates affording situations which can be understood in terms of Forms of Engagement. A user trial was conducted in which participants had to either perform a simulated tea-making task or search for letters hidden under objects to spell words. The first task involved a familiar sequence (and we also included an unfamiliar sequence), and the second task involved either real or false words. We show that, when cues provided by the objects correspond to a ‘logical’ task sequence (i.e., familiar and/or easily interpretable), they aid performance and when these cues relate to ‘illogical’ task sequences, performance is impaired. We explain these results in terms of forms of engagement and suggest applications for rehabilitation.