9.4 Whither the Future?

Physical interface characters use rules of social behavior as the basis for the form and content of their playful learning interactions. The nature of the social interactions and the complexity of the functionality required for each character are shaped by both the personalities of the interface characters themselves and by the social and cognitive abilities of the target users for each product. While each character is self-contained with fixed content, a wireless radio link allows the character to receive new speech and new behavior patterns in conjunction with other media, such as the TV or PC. The wireless link makes the character's interaction with these other media invisible and intuitive, just as it is with social actors such as peers or parents. The character's mimicry of social behavior with these other media is appropriate to the medium in question, and extends the social interface in such a way as to augment these other media using social interactions in the same manner that they would be augmented by another person. What are the next steps in the evolution of physical character interfaces? What more can such technologies do? A good way to peer into the future is to examine the limitations of the current design, and to ask what can be added to make the interface characters both more lifelike and better learning partners.