How does a tangible user interface work?

They can represent items, people, activities and/or events, and look or feel similar to what they refer to. For example, a cup can be used as three-dimensional tangible symbol to represent the action: “drink”. A photograph of a cup can be used as a two-dimensional tangible symbol to also represent the action : “drink”.

Intangible User Interfaces, however, would be a branch of interface that relies on everything but using your physical body in motion as an input mechanism .

Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) describe physical objects that are able to translate user actions into input events in the computer interface . They are an implementation of the approach described as “direct manipulation” by Shneiderman et al.