Ishii, H., & Ullmer, B. (1997). Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces Between People, Bits and Atoms. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
 (CHI '97), 234–241.

Tangible user interfaces are designs where people interact with digital information through physical artifacts.

The 1997 CHI paper by Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer of the MIT Media Lab lays out the vision, technologies, and examples for TUIs, building on three key concepts: interactive surfaces, graspable physical objects, and ambient media for background awareness.

Typeset in King's Caslon.