The curiousness of children is infinite. My 18 month baby is into everything, looking, pointing, grabbing, pulling. As any parent will tell you, it is pretty relentless as the world is explored anew. With each discovery comes the instinctual need to communicate with us what they are thinking and feeling. It is phenomenal how much is actually being taken in but of course without language, deciphering the baa-baa-beedahh-dees feels like a task for Bletchley Park.

What has been incredibly enlightening however was how gesturing through sign language can help to bridge that gap. After several months of “Sign and Sign”, which is a baby group to teach basic sign language, I was able to communicate about specific things; abstract and literal. For example, if she sees a star then fanning the fingers out from a fist tells us or if she is hungry or has a pain then a simple gesture lets us know. The recognition of understanding and being able to communicate is self evident, it is what we all continue to try to achieve even after the nappies are off.

The parallels between this and gestural interaction are clear. If you can communicate with your audience using simple gestures they are likely to become engaged more easily as the threshold to participation is lowered. I no longer need to coordinate by hand with the mouse to cause a cursor to move to a specific point to click…baa-baa-beedahh… I just press, or circle or swipe.  It is inherent, immediate, intuitive and why these types of interfaces are becoming woven more tightly into our social fabric.

Carrying on the theme of profiles, I got sucked into Twitterers the other day. In part this was due to the design of the Tweetie iPhone app which is a great example of encouraging exploratory behaviour - Tweeties UI transitions (horizontal wipe) emphasize progress and makes it easy to access a users followers without disrupting the user flow. So off I went tapping from a user to their followers and within minutes had crossed continents and socio-economic boundaries into sub cultures and back again.

Here’s some of the profiles I stumbled upon. The way this space is used to herald a users presence makes a pretty good exercise in communication and copywriting. How do you describe yourself in fewer than 160 chars? What are you trying to say and who are you saying it to?