Designing Gestural Interfaces

EXISTING MOVEMENT NOTATION SYSTEMS

Several systems of documentation focus on movement. Most of these existing notation systems are far too complex for use in documenting interfaces, except perhaps for the most complicated of gestural systems. But there are some things we can extract from their methodologies.

Most of these systems of notation have sprung up around dance.Dance notation is used for the analysis and recreation of choreography, so it has similar aims as interface documentation; however, the subject (dance), the actors/users (dancers), the audience(choreographers), and the fact that there is no digital or mechanical system for the actors to interact with are some of the obvious differences.

Figure 5-1. The nine different directions of Labanotation. Shadings of these symbols indicate the height of the gesture.

LABANOTATION

Invented in the twentieth century by dance theorist Rudolf Laban, Labanotation is a system of movement notation that is most commonly used for dance notation. Labanotation uses a set of abstract symbols to define the part of the body doing the movement, the direction and level of the movement, and the time it takes to do the movement.

Figure 5-2. The human figure in Labanotation. The movable parts of the body are clearly called out and can be placed on a Labanotation ...