Growth, Change and Decay: Plants and Interaction Possibilities

Our work explores using plants as an interaction material to extend and disrupt existing notions of HCI. We focus in particular on how the affordances and properties of plants can be utilised for enhanced physical and emotional interaction between people and computers, with our core motive being to find methods of enriching user engagement. Moreover, we investigate whether plants could offer a new dimension of interaction and emotional attachment to computer interfaces. We conducted a study to observe people's interactions with prototype plant-based systems, and also interviewed them about future usage of plants in HCI. Our early findings indicate that using a plant-based interface triggered emotive connections, making interactions more enjoyable. In this work-in-progress, we discuss the results of this study, and consider the future potential for using plants as an interaction medium.