A physical icon is a real object used to interact with a digital environment or represent digital information. It is part of tangible computing and can be manipulated with hands. It has potential for integrated digital environments and could have storage or processing capacity in the future.
A physical icon, or phicon, is a real object that is used to interact with a digital environment or represent some digital information inside a computer. The term is used in the field of tangible computing, particularly when discussing tangible user interfaces (TUI). Like a traditional digital icon that is displayed on a computer monitor and can be clicked, dragged, or otherwise interacted with, a physical icon is designed with the same concept in mind, except that the phicon is manipulated with the hands instead of with a keyboard or mouse cursor. Ideally, a phicon could be used naturally within an integrated digital environment and not necessarily be instantly recognizable as a piece of hardware. While there is some research into the development and use of a physical icon and tangible computer systems, there are no commercially manufactured consumer products or systems available as of 2011.
The concept of a physical icon is to endow objects within a physical environment, such as an office, with meaning in relation to a tangible computer system. For the physical icon to work, it must be used in conjunction with a computer system that has an awareness of different external objects so that it can react appropriately. The object could be used to work with a visual system equipped with a computer monitor, or it could be used to interact with a non-visual system such as an answering machine or a thermostat in a home.
A completely hypothetical example of using a physical icon would be in an office environment where a tangible computer and monitor are integrated into a desktop. To open a word processor on the touch computer, a phicon such as a pen could be brought to a certain area of the desktop. The pen would trigger the computer to open a word processor and could also act as an input device. Once a document was written, a phicon such as a paper clip could be placed over the display of the document to command the tangible computer to print it. This is based on the fact that several phicons are specifically designed with some kind of signal ingrained in them for the computer to receive, or it might involve an optical shape recognition system to know what objects are being introduced.
Another area of research is the creation of a physical icon that, instead of simply being a representational device for human-computer interaction, actually has some kind of storage or processing capacity of its own. This would mean that a document or program could be stored on a phicon and that phicon could be used in the same way on any tangible computer. A physical environment could ultimately contain several networked tangible computers integrated into different types of objects. In this scenario, a tangible component of the computer might look like a small paper clip bin, and the physical icon might be a paper clip, so when a paper clip is dropped into the bin, a schedule or calendar appears on the display.
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