We inquire into ways of understanding plant interaction through a triangulation of four approaches: a multispecies ethnography of people's ordinary practices and doings in relation to sakura trees during their short blossoming season; readings of theoretical works on human-plant relations and plants' urge to spread; a systematic review of how plants are involved in computing and computer systems; and finally a review study on how cherry blossoms are used in design and architecture. We bring these together and propose to discuss the involvement of florae in computer systems and design items through the lens of understanding plant interaction as temporally extended dissemination and agency to spread. The design intent within Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) has been to develop systems where non-human species are seen as "users". If such an approach is applied to plants, then we need to frame research in a direction that aims to give us an understanding of what these sorts of users are doing. Since the most successful forms of dissemination are hedonic, we argue that researchers should focus more specifically on system design that supports aesthetic interaction, rather than supporting abstract contemplation, as has been common within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
This paper is an introduction to the “Future IKEA Catalogue”, enclosed here as an example of a design fiction produced from a long standing industrial-academic collaboration. We introduce the catalogue here by discussing some of our experiences using design fictionwith companies and public sector bodies, giving some background to the catalogue and the collaboration which produced it.
With the advent of wearable devices equipped with publicly visible screens, we argue for the need to apply fashion thinking in designing their visual expression. The screen provides endless variations of visual expression, beyond traditional clothing. The topic motivates us to investigate the potential of assembling “fashion thinking” with services generation, to create new forms of use that wearers will adore, as they do with clothes. Disregarding fashion thinking in wearable design might lead to user dissatisfaction and missed opportunities. In an explorative design study we triangulate three methods i.e. a small study on the use of smart watches in dressing practices; an invention and design of a service called “Watch for Figuracy”, with a watch face contextually dependent on the wearer’s dressed ensemble, and finally an initial user feedback study. Altogether they indicate the potential of fashion wearable hybrids and shortcomings in utilizing color theory for matching the watch face to the outfit.
In order to invent and investigate new approaches for the use of enjoying live video, we suggest a combination of emerging mobile webcasting with artistic ambient video, which would enable a form of user generated broadcasts from individually selected cherished places for home decoration. Drawing on the approach of Research through Design we present a study of people who have occasional access to highly appreciated geographical locations, a design instantiation and prototype called LiveNature, as well as a system implementation. We present the result of a technical evaluation, which was conducted during two weeks of deployment. It shows that mobile webcasting provide continuous and stable streams of such a quality that it can be presented for home decoration, and that the video can be combined with real time sensor data to generate aesthetically interesting hybrid media. We also learned that the use of mobile webcasting for home decoration raises new challenges in order to provide unobtrusive and glance based interaction.
This thesis conceptualises, investigates, and reflects on the moving image design space in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Motivated by the increasing number of videos, films, and animations produced in the field, the thesis recognizes moving image making as a designerly way of inquiry across research and practice, and argues for the importance of moving image as a research topic in interaction design.
The first contribution of this thesis is the conceptualization of the moving image design space. The growing body of moving images, varying in forms and purposes, can be held together to establish a foundation of knowledge that informs and generates new research and practice. We identify four collections of existing works and their different roles, namely moving image as design technique, design element, design exhibit, and design promotion. The second contribution is the manifestation of moving image making through concrete design studies. These exemplars empirically demonstrate how they investigate, enrich, and challenge the four established collections, and ultimately expand the moving image design space.
These contributions not only provide new knowledge on moving images for better understanding their various roles in interaction design and making works that respond to emerging design opportunities, but also foreground the discussion on the mediation aspect of moving image in HCI.
This paper describes the author's doctoral study that intends to explore alternative means to communicate interactions design research with focus on the communication of hybrid interactions. This exploration is realized by proposing and validating different approaches in various design cases. The processes and outcomes contribute to the ongoing discussion in the interaction design community on bridging the gap between research and design, in particular, in designing hybrid interactive systems.
Film media have become an essential part of the symbolic production of fashion, not least because of the emergence of Internet. Fashion film uses storytelling in a way that the audience comes to experience the garments in combination with the film. The film experience then influences viewers' eventual experience of wearing the garment. Fiction enables fashion and fashion becomes fiction. At the same time, there is an emerging interest within computer science, such as human-computer interaction (HCI), in designing fashion-related, digital services and wearable technologies, which are also termed "digital fashion". Such technology has the potential to offer new products that are worn as garments. A digital garment shares the focus on visual appearance with traditional clothing fashion, but differs from the latter because it can change its visual expression. In developing and studying such technology, we need to understand both what constitutes fashion in a broad sense, and how to communicate these new design concepts to intended users. Both challenges motivate the production of a film on fashionable wearables. We therefore need to unpack in detail how to make such a film, as well as how to address the differences between the "functions" of fabric and of digital technology.
In recent years there has been growing concern about a gap between HCI research and industrial practitioners. We review methods proposed in HCI for enhancing communication between researchers and designers, and propose previsualization animation, borrowed from the movie industry, as an additional means to support this communication. The potential benefit is investigated through a process of designing and producing an animated film for a design research project at a furniture company and gathering initial user feedback. We argue that a technique that accounts for interaction dynamics and provisionality and that supports brevity and mobility can communicate design research in an inspirational manner to practitioners. However we also identified a remaining difference in the two groups' expectations about the animation, with researchers wanting it to be more research-like and practitioners wanting it to be more production-oriented.
This paper presents a design workshop that explores the future of fashionable wearable technology focusing on aesthetics. The results of the workshop include four fashion design concepts and the implications emerged from the discussions on each concept during the workshop. These implications open up new design space of technologies and materials that account for aesthetics beyond traditional fabric, i.e. transparency, scale, irregularity, movement, contextual expressions and fashion intelligence.
This video presents a design fiction in the form of a fashion film. It intends to mediate a design concept for a smartwatch that can change its colors and patterns to fit in the wearer's dress ensemble, which has been reported previously [1]. We see an increased interest in HCI to design fashionable wearables. However, visually appealing designs are not necessarily considered fashionable. We are motivated by the fundamental role of fashion media in transforming clothing items into fashionable garments. Fashion film, as one of the most important fashion media in the industry today, has the potential to represent wearable design concepts and to speak to a fashion-oriented audience within and beyond HCI.
Tablet computers contain affordances that could make them particularly useful for students in interaction design. However, there is a lack of research and guidelines on how to integrate mobile tablets in learning. In this paper, we aim to gain understanding on the use of tablets in interaction design education by conducting a case study in an undergraduate class in interaction design. We frame our results in five features of mobile devices. Mobility and multi-modality stood out as the most distinct features of tablets in interaction design education.
LiveNature is an interactive system that intends to connect people with their remote cherished places. This connection is realized by streaming live videos and collecting weather sensor data from the users' cherished places, and presenting the video mixed with weather visualization in their homes in a decorative and aesthetic manner. The user chooses one of the live videos displayed in picture frames to active it in a projection screen and control its visual effects influenced by real time weather sensor data. These effects change constantly in response to external factors, such as camera angle, sunlight direction and weather condition. This system can enrich the sense of a cherished place and encourage ludic experiences by enabling the user to improvise the visualization of their cherished places in real time.
Liveness, as discussed in HCI and in media studies, focuses on an intriguing and beloved experiential quality that can influence new forms of video applications. We suggest a shift from accounts of liveness in "events" to liveness in ambient media for home décor by designing a system called TransLive that exploits the "magic" of mediatizing the "now" at a distant and cherished place. We present an interview study including four families, who experienced the system for two weeks each in a concept apartment setting. It shows how immediacy and unpredictability provide compelling experiences. Authenticity and engagement, which are previously considered as inherent qualities in live media, instead occur in the context of use. Finally, the experience of transcendence triggered by slow and continuous video streams open up a new design space of liveness. Thus, not only do we take inspiration from liveness theory, but we also need to redefine it.