19. Cyber-Physical Systems, Blended Tool Environments, and Playful Creativity

All tools humanity uses are extensions of their physical and/or virtual reach, towards a specific purpose or to fulfill a particular, specified, or dedicated task. The tool is handled, initiated and actively guided to participate in interaction, perception, and/or interpretation of the world around us. Tools mediate in action and interaction, like handling a toothbrush to gain a fresh set of cleaned teeth or to use a hammer to pound nails in a material. The real physicality of these human interactions convey a lot of information and creates knowledge in various levels of insight and understanding. Not only in terms of feeling satisfied in the accomplishment of a task, but also in the experience of tool use and succesful interaction. Furthermore, metacognitive aspects of tool use occur when human beings and tools work together and can be seen as an action-based method of advancing knowledge. In the quotidian, a mixture of tools (i.e. used, embedded) and tool activities occur to directly or indirectly interact with our physical and virtual surroundings, things, or systems. Analogue tools, like e.g. knives, pens, chairs and cars have different complexities, but through communicated ’meaning’ (Dewey, 2005) [9], these artifacts possess a distinct quality and intrinsic interaction of use. Some of these tools have very simple but effective use qualities and therefore are most of the time easy to understand in function and use. Other more sophisticated tools imply more study and demand lots of exercise (i.e. high learning threshold) in order to get the full benefit, function and gain in user experience (UX) and results. In the digital and virtual realms many varieties of computational tools are encountered. As a consequence, many categories and levels of tool use, usage through interaction, usability, user-skills and UX happen. The last decades showed a plethora of tool applications and tool interactions that eluded many users, consequently leading to misinterpretation, misguidance, frustration, reduction and inert mediocrity. Not to speculate that digital innovations and tools are defunct gadgets or not worthy of inclusion in daily life. On the contrary, digital technology plays a crucial role in our understanding of the physical and virtual worlds that co-exists and give us much broader boundless experiences and perspectives than ever before. The problem with most digital tools is, the constructed user interface (UI) and user interaction (UA) between a user and machine, as shown in, for example; Carroll, 1991 [5], Carroll, 2002 [6], Dix, 2009 [10], Hartson, 2003 [16], Piumsomboon et al., 2017 [31], Wendrich, 2016 [44], Rogers, 2011 [33]. This in turn has lead to more study and research being conducted on this subject over the last decades, what somehow lead to more confusion and misapprehension. Incremental improvements in UI have been explored and became a sort of standard, new approaches to UIs and UAs have appeared and wiped others, in some cases e.g. multi-touch sensing surfaces became a next step in interacting with the digital-virtual realms. This in turn lead to a leap in applications software (app) design to create tools that were easy to manipulate and use by swiping fingers across high-definition interactive icons to work the tool. However, how feebly, fleetly or superficial this type of mediated interactions may seem, somehow it became a prefered way of ’doing things.’ Gradually this kind of interaction became the standard, encroached with instant gratification and satisfaction. Eventually, everything is an approximation with human frailty, so is tool use and are tools, Figure 19.1.