Interactive Interior and Proxemics Thresholds: Empowering Participants in Sensitive Conversations

The position and workings of interactive interior elements matter greatly on the relations people may enact. This paper reports on the conception and evaluation of an interactive table and its interior effects designed to support sensitive consultations between healthcare personnel, patients and relatives as they happen during treatment of cancer diseases in a hospital department of oncology. The interior design includes the physical shape of artefact, its digital functionality and how the seating around it is to take place. The design of the table is substantiated through observations of current practice, framing of the design challenge, conceptualization, and exploring form giving alternatives. Through a set of evaluations in actual use settings it is argued how the design concept of the table as interactive interior points to how notions in interaction proxemics should be rearticulated. In particular, this paper argues how proxemics thresholds should be regarded as dynamic and relational.