Interaction Design History Spring 2026 | Week 3 | March 23, 2026

Tangible Output — The History of Printing & Calm Technology

Agenda Overview

• Reading Review
• Review & Show-and-Tell: Paper Controllers
• Lecture: From Plotters to Receipts (The History of Digital Printing)
• Break (15 minutes)
• Discussion: Calm Computing & Physical Debug Logs
• Design Activity: Speculative Tangible Outputs
• Homework Overview

Reading Review (15 minutes)

• Break into small groups, discuss the reading (Clement Zhang’s Tangible Interfaces with Printed Paper Markers)

Review & Show-and-Tell

• Share out Week 2 "Paper Controllers" (ArUco marker assignments).
• Discussion: What worked well? What could be improved?

Lecture: From Plotters to Receipts

• The Pen Plotter: The earliest digital printing. Vector-based, mechanical, drawing lines rather than pixels.
  • The machine as a physical actor performing a task over time.
  • Explore: Vera Molnar's early generative plotter art
• The Xerox Laser Printer: The shift to batch processing and the "page" paradigm. High-fidelity, document-focused, and the creation of the modern office workflow.
  • The Invention of WYSIWYG: "What You See Is What You Get" was invented at Xerox PARC specifically so the digital screen interface would perfectly mirror the printed artifact.
• The Thermal Receipt Printer: Continuous roll, immediate, tactile, and transactional. Why this low-fidelity, 1-bit medium is perfect for spatial computing and persistent state.
  • Inspiration: Attention Receipts
• Introduction to Calm Technology: Before our discussion, let's look at two ways digital information is pushed to the physical periphery.
  • The Ultimate Calm Interface: The Dangling String (Live Wire) by Natalie Jeremijenko (1995). An 8-foot string attached to a motor that twitched in the periphery of the room based on digital network traffic.
  • Tangible Notifications: BERG's Little Printer (2012). A friendly, cloud-connected thermal printer that printed tiny, personalized morning briefs and messages from friends.
• Physical Artifacts: Why physical artifacts still matter in a digital-first workflow. Discuss situations where a physically printed artifact is more convenient than digital equivalents (tickets? menus? checklists?).

---

15 Minute Break

---

Discussion: Calm Computing & Physical Debug Logs

• Calm Computing: Moving information from the center of our attention to the periphery. How can a printout act as a "calm" notification? (Referencing the Little Printer and Dangling String).
• Physical Debug Logs: Using printers not just for transactions, but as a tangible notification system, an audit trail, or a physical memory of a digital event.

Design Activity: Speculative Tangible Outputs

• The Challenge: In groups, pick a modern, abstract digital service (e.g., Spotify, a smart home thermostat, a Slack channel, your bank app).
• The Task: Design a physical "receipt" or printout that this service would generate.
  • What is the essential information?
  • How do you use typography (font weight, scale, hierarchy, etc.) without color?
  • What is the physical lifecycle of this piece of paper? (Is it pinned to a board? Handed to a friend? Crumpled up?)
• Output: Collaborate in a Figma file on the design of your hypothetical receipt.

Homework

• Reading:
  • "The Coming Age of Calm Technology" by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown (1996)
  • Andrew Sutherland and the Paper Computer, interactivity, computability and no screens!
• Assignment: Refine your speculative receipt wireframe. Create a high-fidelity digital mockup of your receipt (using Figma or Illustrator) adhering to the strict 1-bit (black and white only) constraints of thermal printing.