Touch task

Graphic language for touch

RFIDs are being used for an increasingly varied number of interactions with everyday infrastructures. From travelcards, keyless entry, passports, micropayments and vehicle identification to content downloads, smart posters and physical hyperlinks on mobile phones. While attempts have been made to visualise these interactions, many of these variouse iconographies have unclear or inconsistent design, and no definite language has emerged.

How do we visualise these RFID interactions? Are there simple and generic ways of representing them? There are two distinct ways of approaching this. The first approach is to think about the act or the action of the interaction: how do we invite users to touch, swipe or otherwise interact with RFID. The second approach is to think about what the interaction will do, the “verb”. Here you could think about purchasing, opening, closing, downloading and identifying. How do we represent those in a consistent and useful way? Look into existing NFC research and documentation to see the kinds of use-cases that are being designed with NFC.

Finally, this project might also consider the physical form of RFID readers and writers in the environment. How might we redesign an RFID ticketing machine or payment terminal? What is the optimum location, form and placement of an RFID reader for key access for instance. This might cross over into the other brief: RFID access control.