Peripheral Interaction in Desktop Computing: Why It’s Worth Stepping Beyond Traditional Mouse and Keyboard: Challenges and Opportunities for HCI in the Periphery of Attention

When computers entered our workplaces and other areas of our everyday life, many of the opportunities to use our physical abilities diminished. The macromonotony of large movements in, e.g., line production has become the micromonotony of small movements in computer-based office work. At the same time, looking at our everyday activities that do not involve technology, we naturally make use of our perception and motor abilities and continually interact with our surroundings. Our research has thus focused on achieving similar fluidness in our interactions with the digital world. While traditional desktop work usually involves controlling computers by pressing buttons, dropping menus, and sliding bars, we invite users to act with their physical surroundings, i.e., furniture embodied as handles to actions in the digital world. Based on our research on peripheral embodied interaction through smart furniture and insights from related research, we provide a conceptual overview of the seemingly minor, yet accumulatively powerful, benefits that this interaction style can provide as additional input dimension in desktop settings