Seeding a Repository of Methods-To-Be for Nature-Entangled Design ResearchWe share an emergent repository of nature-entangled methods-to-be shared, experimented with, and discussed during a conference workshop. We present them in-use, as they are in formation. We do not seek to theorise or even fully articulate these methods-to-be. Rather, to make them approachable and actionable for others by showing them not fully polished. By doing this, we advocate for increased transparency in the difficulties of creating new methods, techniques, tools, and approaches. Our contribution is threefold: we provide 1) an annotated portfolio of methods-to-be; 2) illustrative examples of how cross-pollination of these methods can enrich their situated use; and 3) a discussion of ways to further articulate the methods and deepen reflection on their roles in nature-entangled design processes.2024OTOscar Tomico et al.Participatory DesignHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)DIS
Grand Challenges in SportsHCIThe field of Sports Human-Computer Interaction (SportsHCI) investigates interaction design to support a physically active human being. Despite growing interest and dissemination of SportsHCI literature over the past years, many publications still focus on solving specific problems in a given sport. We believe in the benefit of generating fundamental knowledge for SportsHCI more broadly to advance the field as a whole. To achieve this, we aim to identify the grand challenges in SportsHCI, which can help researchers and practitioners in developing a future research agenda. Hence, this paper presents a set of grand challenges identified in a five-day workshop with 22 experts who have previously researched, designed, and deployed SportsHCI systems. Addressing these challenges will drive transformative advancements in SportsHCI, fostering better athlete performance, athlete-coach relationships, spectator engagement, but also immersive experiences for recreational sports or exercise motivation, and ultimately, improve human well-being.2024DEDon Samitha Elvitigala et al.Monash UniversityGame UX & Player BehaviorSerious & Functional GamesMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesCHI
Design Resources in Movement-based Design Methods: a Practice-based CharacterizationMovement-based design methods are increasingly adopted to help design rich embodied experiences. While there are well-known methods in the field, there is no systematic overview to help designers choose among them, adapt them, or create their own. We collected 41 methods used by movement design researchers and employed a practice-based, bottom-up approach to analyze and characterize their properties. We found 17 categories and arranged them into five main groups: Design Resources, Activities, Delivery, Framing, and Context. In this paper, we describe these groups in general and then focus on Design Resources containing the categories of Movement, Space, and Objects. We ground the characterization with examples from empirical material provided by the design researchers and references to previous work. Additionally, we share recommendations and action points to bring these into practice. This work can help novice and seasoned design researchers who want to employ movement-based design methods in their practice.2023JVJosé Manuel Vega-Cebrián et al.Full-Body Interaction & Embodied InputDance & Body Movement ComputingDIS
Pet-Robot or Appliance? Care Home Residents with Dementia Respond to a Zoomorphic Floor Washing Robot Any active entity that shares space with people is interpreted as a social actor. Based on this notion, we explore how robots that integrate functional utility with a social role and character can integrate meaningfully into daily practice. Informed by interviews and observations, we designed a zoomorphic floor cleaning robot which playfully interacts with care home residents affected by dementia. A field study shows that playful interaction can facilitate the introduction of utilitarian robots in care homes, being nonthreatening and easy to make sense of. Residents previously reacted with distress to a Roomba robot, but were now amused by and played with our cartoonish cat robot or simply tolerated its presence. They showed awareness of the machine-nature of the robot, even while engaging in pretend-play. A playful approach to the design of functional robots can thus explicitly conceptualize such robots as social actors in their context of use.2022EMEmanuela Marchetti et al.SDU Syddansk UniversitetElderly Care & Dementia SupportDomestic RobotsEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsCHI
Designing for Transformative Futures: Creative Practice, Social Change and Climate EmergencyWe discuss three cases of transformative creative practice that aim to address large-scale societal issues related to the climate emergency by taking a series of interconnected, small-scale actions. Drawing on our first-hand perspectives, we reflect on how the cases address such issues by proliferating across different social contexts and supporting creative engagements of diverse stakeholders. We offer this empirical reflection at a time of rapid social and ecological change that has affected all life on the planet. Eco-social challenges and structural inequalities caused by shifts in global economic, political and technological power require new approaches and transformative actions to stabilize and restore ecosystems on which life depends. Our research shows that creative practice in art and design has a critical role to play in these processes of transformation. By discussing the opportunities and challenges encountered by our three cases within their transformative efforts and analyzing how they proliferate across diverse scales, we aim to expand the emerging scholarship on the transformative potential of creative practice.2021MDMarkéta Dolejšová et al.Sustainable HCIEcological Design & Green ComputingHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)C&C
Chasing Play Potentials in Food Culture: Learning from Traditions to Inspire Future Human-Food Interaction DesignIn this pictorial, we turn to culture and traditions to present an annotated portfolio of play-food potentials, i.e. interesting design qualities and/or interaction mechanisms that could help promote playful and social engagement in food practices. Our portfolio emerged from a one-day workshop where we played with and analyzed a collection of 27 food traditions from diverse cultural backgrounds and historical periods. We highlight play forms and experiential textures that are underexplored in Human-Food Interaction (HFI) research. Our contribution is intended to inspire designers to broaden the palette of play experiences and emotions embraced in HFI.2020FBFerran Altarriba Bertran et al.Gamification DesignFood Culture & Food InteractionDIS
Overcoming Reserve – Supporting Professional Appropriation of Interactive CostumesDeploying wearable technologies in the performing arts not only concerns costume wearers but affects further stakeholders whose work is impacted by the interactive effects or who help maintain the technology. Beyond the wearer, literature neglects how these other stakeholders engage with interactive costumes, though a performance production is based on the contribution of many parties. We conducted a longitudinal study to examine how stakeholders of a youth ballet production experience and appropriate interactive costuming. Our findings suggest that user experiences vary according to stakeholders’ closeness to the costume, background and taste, the costume interaction mode and social environment. We expand existing models of technology appropriation with two novel technology relations: professional reserve and polite indifference. Based on these, we suggest integration into existing practices, to design for the show, and create positive experiences to incorporate interactive costumes in the performing arts and discuss relevance for other professional fields.2020MHMichaela Honauer et al.Shape-Changing Interfaces & Soft Robotic MaterialsDance & Body Movement ComputingDIS
Disrupting (More-than-) Human-Food Interaction: Experimental Design, Tangibles and Food-Tech FuturesDigital technology has become a frequent companion of daily food practices, shaping the ways we produce, consume, and interact with food. Smart kitchenware, diet tracking apps, and other techno-solutions carry promise for healthy and sustainable food futures but are often problematic in their impact on food cultures. We conducted four Human-Food Interaction (HFI) workshops to reflect on and anticipate food-tech issues, using experimental food design co-creation as our primary method. At the workshops, food and food practices served as the central research theme and accessible starting point to engage stakeholders and explore values, desires, and imaginaries associated with food-tech. Drawing on these explorations, we discuss diverse roles that experimental design co-creation, performed with and around food, can play in supporting critical, interdisciplinary HFI inquiries. Our findings will appeal to design researchers interested in food as a research theme or as a tangible (and compostable!) design material affording diverse co-creative engagements.2020MDMarkéta Dolejšová et al.Sustainable HCIHuman-Nature Relationships (More-than-Human Design)Food Culture & Food InteractionDIS
Storycoding - Programming Physical Artefacts for Research Through DesignMaking programmable physical artefacts and prototypes has inherent value for Research-through-Design (RtD) based HCI. Furthermore, the abstractions and representations within RtD and programming are vastly different, such as between observations, storyboards and the code. Studies have shown that the program of an artefact influences the RtD outcome, but there is also a disconnect between the observations of use and the abstractions involved in the programming. How can we program an artefact so that the code can be created, modified and reflected upon based on directly observable and non-technical abstractions? In this paper we present Storycoding, a computational-thinking based method for programming that focuses on bridging the representational abstractions. Using Storycoded artefacts, we examine programming in light of RtD. We discuss how Storycoding enables programming that is directly observable between the use and the abstractions, being respectful towards RtD. Finally, we conclude with implications towards HCI research and practice.2020JMJussi Mikkonen et al.Circuit Making & Hardware PrototypingMakerspace CultureDIS
Imagining Data-Objects for Reflective Self-TrackingWhile self-tracking data is typically captured real-time in a lived experience, the data is often stored in a manner detached from the context where it belongs. Research has shown that there is a potential to enhance people's lived experiences with data-objects (artifacts representing contextually relevant data), for individual and collective reflections through a physical portrayal of data. This paper expands that research by studying how to design contextually relevant data-objects based on people's needs. We conducted a participatory research project with five households using object theater as a core method to encourage participants to speculate upon combinations of meaningful objects and personal data archives. In this paper, we detail three aspects that seem relevant for designing data-objects: social sharing, contextual ambiguity and interaction with the body. We show how an experience-centric view on data-objects can contribute with the contextual, social and bodily interplay between people, data and objects.2020MKMaria Karyda et al.Aalto UniversityUniversal & Inclusive DesignData PhysicalizationCHI
Metaprobes, Metaphysical Workshops and Sketchy PhilosophyThe intersection of philosophy and HCI is a longstanding site of interest for the field that has been attracting special attention in recent years. In this paper, we present metaphysical probes (Metaprobes) as a tool for design-led philosophical inquiry. A Metaprobe is a design artifact used to study a metaphysical idea without concealing the philosophical tools mobilized by the designers or the designerly knowledge attained after deployment. We introduce the concept of a Metaphysical Workshop. This is the set of sketchy philosophical notions that a designer mobilizes in order to research a philosophical idea through design. We then present a case study that comprises: the philosophical issue under examination, the Metaprobes designed to study it, the metaphysical workshop used and the designerly insight produced. We conclude with a discussion of the potentials and weaknesses of Metaprobes in relation to other critical and speculative research-through-design practices. We aim to provide one way to make philosophies already present in design more explicit and make other philosophical concepts relevant to HCI more accessible and workable for designers.2020EEEnrique Encinas et al.Aalborg UniversityTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIDesign FictionCHI
Frequency-Based Design of Smart TextilesDespite the increasing amount of smart textile design practitioners, the methods and tools commonly available have not progressed to the same scale. Most smart textile interaction designs today rely on detecting changes in resistance. The tools and sensors for this are generally limited to DC-voltage-divider based sensors and multimeters. Furthermore, the textiles and the materials used in smart textile design can exhibit behaviour making it difficult to identify even simple interactions using those means. For instance, steel-based textiles exhibit intrinsic semiconductive properties that are difficult to identify with current methods. In this paper, we show an alternative way to measure interaction with smart textiles. By relying on visualisation known as Lissajous-figures and frequency-based signals, we can detect even subtle and varied forms of interaction with smart textiles. We also show an approach to measuring frequency-based signals and present an Arduino-based system called Teksig to support this type of textile practice.2019JMJussi Mikkonen et al.Syddansk UniversitetElectronic Textiles (E-textiles)CHI
Making Sense of Human-Food InteractionActivity in Human-Food Interaction (HFI) research is skyrocketing across a broad range of disciplinary interests and concerns. The dynamic and heterogeneous nature of this emerging field presents a challenge to scholars wishing to critically engage with prior work, identify gaps and ensure impact. It also challenges the formation of community. We present a Systematic Mapping Study of HFI research and an online data visualisation tool developed to respond to these issues. The tool allows researchers to engage in new ways with the HFI literature, propose modifications and additions to the review, and thereby actively engage in community-making. Our contribution is threefold: (1) we characterize the state of HFI, reporting trends, challenges and opportunities; (2) we provide a taxonomy and tool for diffractive reading of the literature; and (3) we offer our approach for adaptation by research fields facing similar challenges, positing value of the tool and approach beyond HFI.2019FBFerran Altarriba Bertran et al.University of California, Santa CruzFood Culture & Food InteractionCHI
Responsive news summarization for ubiquitous consumption on multiple mobile devicesWith the proliferation of online news read on devices ranging from desktops to smart watches, the need for meaningful summaries of long texts is growing. Manual summaries are labour-intensive and cannot be offered for all display sizes, whereas today’s abstracts of most news texts are teasers designed to attract the reader’s interest more than to provide an overview of an article’s content suited to the reader’s information needs. We propose responsive news summarization as a technological approach for filling this gap. Responsive news summarization provides an automatically generated content summary that has the right length for the device requesting the article, plus access to the full text. We describe the system prototype available at multisizenews.com along with the initial user study results and give an outlook on future work.2018RCRocio Chongtay et al.Generative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video)Recommender System UXIUI