Toward a theory of gesture design

Unrestricted The enormous transformation in how humans engage with technologies – providing direct access through touch or gesture, without any mediating controller – has just reached mainstream computing, games and home theaters, with the recent releases of the Kinect and the WAVI Xtion. This change has opened up huge new opportunities for the design of games, interactive experiences and applications. This paper presents the evidence of the connection between the body and perceptions, emotions, and mental states; the powerful, extensive, and surprising ways those connections are manifest; and the unexpected and very potent role that metaphor plays. This paper then presents how that evidence points to a way of employing the emotional and cognitive armature attached to human movement as a means of developing emotionally compelling gestural game-play.