Non-Natural Interaction Design

Natural interactions, such as those based on gesture input, feel intuitive, familiar, and well-suited to user abilities in context, and have been supported by extensive research. Contrary to the conventional mainstream, we advocate for non-natural interaction design as a transformative process that results in highly effective interactions by deliberately deviating from user intuition and expectations of physical-world naturalness or the context in which innate human modalities, such as gestures used for interaction and communication, are applied—departing from the established notion of the “natural,” yet prioritizing usability. To this end, we offer four perspectives on the relationship between natural and non-natural design, and explore three prototypes addressing gesture-based interactions with digital content in the physical environment, on the user’s body, and through digital devices, to challenge assumptions in natural design. Lastly, we provide a formalization of non-natural interaction, along with design principles to guide future developments.