Radical atoms: Beyond tangible bits, toward transformable materials

Radical Atoms have advanced beyond tangible interfaces by assuming a hypothetical generation of materials that can change form and appearance so that similarly reconfigurable to pixels on a screen. Radical Atoms is a vision for the future of human-material interactions in which all digital information has physical manifestation so that people can interact directly with it. A tangible user interface (TUI) builds upon the user's dexterity by embodying digital information in physical space. Tangible design expands the affordances of physical objects so that they can support direct engagement with the digital world. Tabletop TUIs utilize dynamic representations such as video projections, which accompany tangibles in their same physical space to give dynamic expression of underlying digital information and computation. The success of a TUI also relies on a balance and strong perceptual coupling between tangible and intangible representations.