ABSTRACT
In the case of tangible user interfaces, this leads us to think of the ways in which the physical world can express an abstract information structure, and an arrangement of physical objects can become notation, perhaps expressed as manipulable solid diagram. The types of information entity envisaged include people, documents, tasks, reminders, timers, and so on. Users will be able to use their interface to “physically” pass information entities between interactive surfaces, and associate tokens with others’ entities to monitor their evolution, e.g. progress on a task. The tokens could be ordered into physical structures that both illustrated and enforced the abstract argumentation structures of classical rhetoric. This process was carried out in teams, where all children could see the emerging abstract structure, and collaborate in constructing and refining it. The positions and identities of tokens are detected using computer vision techniques, and attributes of the associated information entity are dynamically displayed around the token on the interactive surface.
