Translating HCI Research to Broader Audiences: Motivation, Inspiration, and Critical Factors on Alternative Research OutcomesAlternative Research Outcomes (AROs) go beyond traditional academic publications, taking diverse forms such as documentaries, DIY tutorials, or exhibitions. With growing recognition of the need for more inclusive and contextually appropriate research dissemination, AROs are particularly relevant in HCI and design research. Yet, little has been discussed on why it is important to work on AROs. What are key qualities of AROs? How can the HCI community benefit from learning more about creating AROs? By analyzing six case studies, we propose four qualities of AROs and demonstrate how they emerge in the timeline of a research project. We argue AROs can be adapted to diverse audience needs and share research insights that may extend beyond the original research goals. Our work contributes to a deeper understanding of how AROs can support inclusive research dissemination practices, enabling HCI researchers to engage broader audiences and extend the relevance of their work.2025MYMinYoung Yoo et al.Simon Fraser University, School of Interactive Arts and TechnologyParticipatory DesignInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
Metamorphonic: A Reflective Design Inquiry into Human-Silkworm RelationshipThis work explores an alternative human-silkworm relationship through crafting a triad of interactive research artifacts that serve as a temporary habitat for domestic silk moths, \textit{Bombyx mori}. In the first part of the paper, we present the design journey from acquiring the eggs to harvesting movement in orchestrating the improvised ambient music and elaborate on the aspects of materiality and temporality that crafting the habitability involved. In the second part, we reflect on the alternative relationship as intended and embodied during the four months of co-habitation and discuss the ethical and other emergent issues informed by designer-researcher's autoethnography.2023YIYuta Ikeya et al.Human-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Turner Boxes and Bees: From Ambivalence to DiffractionThis paper is a Research through Design (RtD) investigation that deeply reflects on our ambivalence with three design choices we made while designing in a multispecies context. The ongoing RtD project, called Turner Boxes, aims to design a technological network to interact with wild bees in an urban environment. The design choices negotiate challenges we encountered, including the potential effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF) on bee ecologies; sucrose feeding as an established human-bee interaction; and the question of human intervention when designing in relation to other species. We analyze our negotiations of these challenges along with the practices of beekeepers and ecologists who were part of our investigation, to realize that ambivalence is a characteristic and a resource in multispecies designing. We extend this analysis through feminist epistemologies to articulate a position of diffraction, a standpoint from which to design in multispecies worlds in which interdependencies and differences are critical.2023RWRon Wakkary et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Exploring Long-Term Mediated Relations with a Shape-Changing Thing: A Field Study of coMorphing StoolThis paper presents a long-term field study of the coMorphing stool: a computational thing that can change shape in response to the surrounding light. We deployed 5 coMorphing stools to 5 participants’ homes over 9 months. As co-speculators, the participants reflected on their mediated relations with the coMorphing stool. Findings suggest that they perceived the subtle transformations of the coMorphing stool in the early days of the deployment. After becoming familiar with these features, they interpreted their daily entanglements with the coMorphing stool in diverse personalized ways. Over time, the co-speculators accepted the coMorphing stool as part of their homes. These findings contribute new empirical insights to the shape-changing research field in HCI and enrich discussions on higher-level concepts in postphenomenology. Reflecting on these experiences promotes further HCI explorations on computational things.2023CZCe Zhong et al.Simon Fraser UniversityShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsCHI
transTexture Lamp: Composing a Deformable Device as a Computational WholeResearch into shape-changing and deformable artifacts that explore novel interactions has been growing in design and HCI. Yet, there is little discussion on the design processes behind these approaches and in particular, a theoretical understanding of materiality that is central to deformation. Informed by Wiberg’s compositional interaction design, we contribute an investigation into supporting long-term relations with deformation: the transTexture lamp. Specifically, we crafted a dynamic physical form with materials at hand. We instantiated the materiality of interaction being designed as a computational whole. Reflecting on our theory-informed RtD process enriched our understanding of compositional interaction design. These reflections on our design approach may benefit further explorations into the intersections between materiality, longevity, and actuality in the context of design-oriented HCI.2021CZCe Zhong et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDIS
Exploring the Potential of Apple Face ID as a Drag, Queer and Trans Technology Design ToolThis pictorial is the result of a long-term research project focused on finding opportunities to use Apple Face ID software and infrastructure to build new hybrid identities, exploring its potential as a drag, queer and trans technology design tool. The aim of the project is to validate new paradigms for identity ambiguity, multiplicity and fluidity, using biometric artificial intelligence systems and technologies of control as tools for free identity expression, definition and personal proclamation. To do that, we present our motivation, methodology, approach to exploration, workshop results and validated outputs, and analyse the physical and digital implications of the research. The prostheses shown in this paper are functional, and allow users to train Apple Face ID software to design their own identities connected to their name, Apple ID Number, bank account, social networks, and any other data or online activity digitally associated to this persona.2021SARon Wakkary et al.Gender & Race Issues in HCITechnology Ethics & Critical HCIDIS
Fragile! Handle with care: the Morse ThingsMorse Things are Internet connected ceramic cups and bowls that communicate with each other in Morse Code. This ongoing research iteratively asks thing-centered questions of things and technology. A premise of the Morse Things is that any understanding of a thing or technology is unstable and arguably fragile. In this pictorial, we reflect on how we as researchers, in the course of doing research with the Morse Things, unexpectedly found ourselves literally entangled in the conceptual and physical fragility of the research. This pictorial describes our growing awareness of this instability, beginning with a kintsugi repair of a broken Morse Thing, our false confidence in our package design for shipping, and the difficulties to conceptualize the machine learning world that we ourselves created. We reflect on these experiences, and now see these as reminders of the inevitable fragility and instability of research on thing-perspectives.2020DODoenja Oogjes et al.Empowerment of Marginalized GroupsDigital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceDIS
Alternative Presents for Dynamic FabricIn this paper we investigate how a combination of “speculative” design methods can be used to generate theoretical understandings for dynamic, colour-changing fabrics for garments. Specifically, we combine a first-person, autobiographical, research through design (RtD) approach that draws strategies from speculative design. We call this approach alternative presents, inspired by the work of James Auger, and explore it as a way to generate theoretical propositions for dynamic fabric that emphasize the lived experience over technological innovation. The contributions of this framing are twofold. Firstly, we offer a theoretical contribution to the literature on dynamic fabric. Secondly, we make a methodological contribution for how autobiographical design and RtD can be oriented speculatively to generate intermediate knowledge, with particular emphasis on social-technical aspects.2020AMAngella Mackey et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDesign FictionDIS
The Magic Machine Workshops: Making Personal Design KnowledgeNew technologies emerge into an increasingly complex everyday life. How can we engage users further into material practices that explore ideas and notions of these new things? This paper proposes a set of qualities for short, intense, workshop-like experiences, created to generate strong individual commitments, and expose underlying personal desires as drivers for ideas. By making use of open-ended making to engage participants in the imagination of new things, we aim to allow a broad range of knowledge to materialise, focused on the making of work that is about technology, rather than of technology.2019KAKristina Andersen et al.Eindhoven University of TechnologyDesktop 3D Printing & Personal FabricationMakerspace CultureParticipatory DesignCHI
Encoding Materials and Data for Iterative PersonalizationData is changing how we design consumer products. Shoe production is a prime example of this; foot size, footstep pressure and personal preferences can be used to design personalized shoes. Research done around metamaterials, programming materials and computational composites illustrate the possibilities of creating complex data & material relationships. These new relationships allow us to look at future products almost like software apps, becoming a kind of product service systems, where the focus is on its iterative personalization improvement over time. Can we create systems of such data driven objects that in turn allow us to design new objects that are informed by the data trail? In this paper we report on four RtD project iterations that explore this challenge and provide a set of insights on how to close this new iterative loop.2019TNTroy Nachtigall et al.Eindhoven University of TechnologyCustomizable & Personalized ObjectsCHI
From HCI to HCI-Amusement: Strategies for Engaging what New Technology Makes OldNotions of what counts as a contribution to HCI continue to be contested as our field expands to accommodate perspectives from the arts and humanities. This paper aims to advance the position of the arts and further contribute to these debates by actively exploring what a "non-contribution" would look like in HCI. We do this by taking inspiration from Fluxus, a collective of artists in the 1950's and 1960's who actively challenged and reworked practices of fine arts institutions by producing radically accessible, ephemeral, and modest works of "art-amusement." We use Fluxus to develop three analogous forms of "HCI-amusements," each of which shed light on dominant practices and values within HCI by resisting to fit into its logics.2019LDLaura Devendorf et al.University of Colorado BoulderDigital Art Installations & Interactive PerformanceInteractive Narrative & Immersive StorytellingCHI
Philosophers Living with the Tilting BowlThis paper reports on a postphenomenological inquiry of six trained philosophers, who as study participants lived with and reflected on a research product we designed known as the Tilting Bowl: a ceramic bowl that unpredictably but gently tilts multiple times daily. The Tilting Bowl is a counterfactual artifact that is designed specifically for this study as part of a material speculation approach to design research. A postphenomenological inquiry looks to describe and analyze accounts of relationships between humans and technological artifacts, and how each mutually shapes the other through mediations that form the human subjectivity and objectivity of any given situation. This paper contributes an empirical account and analysis of the relations that emerged (background and alterity) and the relativistic views that co-constitute the philosophers, Tilting Bowl, and their specific worlds. The findings demonstrate the relevance of this philosophical framing to fundamentally and broadly understand how people engage digital artifacts.2018RWRon Wakkary et al.Simon Fraser University, Eindhoven University of TechnologyDesign FictionCHI
Deployments of the table-non-table: A Reflection on the Relation Between Theory and Things in the Practice of Design ResearchDesign-oriented research in HCI has increasingly migrated towards theoretical perspectives to understand the implications of newly crafted technology in everyday life. However, in this context, the relations between theory and understanding the things we make are not always clear, especially the degree to which the nature of the research artifact is revealed through or determined by theory. We examine a series of field deployment studies we conducted with our research artifact table-non-table over the course of four and a half years that we came to see as a postphenomenological inquiry. Importantly, our interpretations of this artifact, methodological concerns, and theoretical groundings evolved over time. We account for and critically reflect on these shifts in the relationship between theory and our design artifact. We detail how theory was enacted and embodied in our design research practice and offer insights into the complex relations between theory and things in design-oriented HCI research.2018SHSabrina Hauser et al.Simon Fraser UniversityParticipatory DesignComputational Methods in HCICHI
Attending to Slowness and Temporality with Olly and Slow Game: A Design Inquiry Into Supporting Longer-Term Relations With Everyday Computational ObjectsSlowness has emerged as a rich lens to frame HCI investigations into supporting longer-term human-technology relations. Yet, there is a need to further address how we design for slowness on conceptual and practical levels. Drawing on the concepts of unawareness, intersections, and ensembles, we contribute an investigation into designing for slowness and temporality grounded in design practice through two cases: Olly and Slow Game. We designed these artifacts over two and a half years with careful attention to how the set of concepts influenced key design decisions in terms of their form, materials, and computational qualities. Our designer-researcher approach revealed that, when put into practice, the concepts helped generatively grapple with slowness and temporality, but are in need of further development to be mobilized for design. We critically reflect on insights emerging across our practice-based research to reflexively refine the concepts and better support future HCI research and practice.2018WOWilliam Odom et al.Simon Fraser UniversityTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIDesign FictionCHI
Towards Ultra Personalized 4D Printed ShoesIn this case study three designers supported by multiple stakeholders created a pair of fully personalized printed high heel shoes in a period of two months for a single user. The shoes are made with soft and flexible materials for dynamic fit and use. The shoes are not only uniquely formed to the user’s feet but the geometry of the material is designed to support and flex with the movement of each foot. These shoes utilize a 4D printing approach in the way they are made to fit the user while they move and change. Designing a shoe to such a degree represents a form of Ultra Personalization. This case study of an ultra personalized approach addresses the negotiation of key design considerations: aesthetics, comfort, robustness, balance and temperature. The findings inform digital fabrication design, software, and tools for designers.2018TNTroy Robert Nachtigall et al.Eindhoven University of TechnologyShape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsShape-Changing Materials & 4D PrintingCHI