Hands Are People Too: Reflections on the Value of Hands (and How to Study Them)

Abstract

Did you know that hands have bodies, relationships, and minds of their own? In the coming years as a new wave of technologies focused on our hands is under development, and as AR/VR may include haptics as a key mode of interaction, we need to design for hands as we would for people – keeping the technology in the background to ensure hands can learn, collaborate, and shine. We conducted a study in 2020 about what gives hands unique value to people. The ambition was to understand hand-based skills across contexts and domains of practical expertise. We asked practitioners to record themselves using their hands, analyzed the video footage, and watched the recordings together with each practitioner. We asked practitioners to reflect on their hands and compare how their skills might apply to other contexts. Through this process, we uncovered that the hands have bodies, relationships, and minds of their own. These fundamental observations help us to imagine and anticipate future technology interactions that are not only relevant and useful, but that respect and enable the aspects of our hands that make us feel most human. Note: The presentation was intended to feature GIFs from fieldwork video, but only still images are allowed per the rules of the pecha kucha format; we therefore storyboarded stills from the recordings as the visuals, to highlight the haptic movements.