For Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and Misses)：

This article provides various forms of physical computing including the ones as obvious as motion detectors to the less obvious ones like attention detector or tilt sensor.

I do feel like to build a good physical computing device, we need to provide tactile feedback and promote structured interaction.

Tactile feedback not only provides people with limited vision better accessibility of certain functions, but is also very critical as it gives the user a deceptive sense of interacting with not the screen and device but the actual thing that the device is trying to simulation ( a book, an instrument etc..).

Structured interaction is also important because personally I would like the interactive devices to have clear instruction on how I’m suppose to operate.Otherwise I might be wasting time on trying to figure out the right way to use it or not realizing some important features.

For Make Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen:

This article elaborates on what we want to achieve by giving clear instructions for the users when designing an interactive device.

I think what I take from the article is that I should focus on how the user will perceive the device without me as the designer explaining it to him or her. Sometimes what we as designers think as intuitive is not so much to a first-time users. In order to test and possibly improve that, we’ll need to conduct a lot of user experiments before we commission.

Also it brings to me an interesting point that we should build a project that’s like a play where the audience are part of the story. We can use the IM projects to express ideas and emotionally affect the audience just like a theatre play can do.  This might be even more effective for certain purposes (educational, awareness raising etc.) since it include the participation of the audience.