MIT
Media Lab
From 2001-2003, I was a member of the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, under the direction of Professor Hiroshi Ishii. The topic of my Master's Thesis was the Actuated Workbench.
Professor Ishii's group pursues a new vision of Human-Computer Interaction: "Tangible Bits."
People have developed sophisticated skills for sensing and manipulating our physical environments. However, most of these skills are not employed by traditional GUI (Graphical User Interface).
Tangible User Interfaces build upon our natural skills by giving physical form to digital information, seamlessly coupling the dual worlds of bits and atoms. The goal is to change the "painted bits" of GUIs to "tangible bits," taking advantage of the richness of multimodal human senses and skills developed through our lifetime of interaction with the physical world.
By giving physical form to digital information and situating it in the architectural spaces our bodies inhabit, TUIs seek a seamless coupling between our parallel physical and digital existences. 
