This paper describes the process of designing the Blue Studio: an interactive space for embodied multi-stakeholder ideation processes. Inspired by embodied sensemaking – the way people make sense of things through external expression and interaction with other people – we iteratively designed material, interactive and spatial interventions in the Blue Studio and evaluated them with multi-stakeholder participants in various studies. Thereupon, we analyzed the impact of the design interventions, based on the seven principles to design for embodied sensemaking and highlighted opportunities for refining our interactive space for embodied ideation. Based on the insights gained, a final design of the Blue Studio was realized and tested on functionality.

The paper presents Polipo, a tangible toy created for children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD). Designed and tested in collaboration with therapists and special educators, Polipo offers various opportunities for tangible interaction and a range of multisensory stimuli aimed at promoting the development of fine motor skills. One of the most distinguishing attributes of Polipo is its strong customization capability. The system provides a means to adapt luminous and sound stimuli; it is equipped with a set of add-ons that therapists can easily and quickly adjust on the basic structure to extend the physical affordances of the tool, offering new tactile stimuli and new manipulation experiences. These design solutions, and the promising results of the on-the-ground trials, highlight the potential of Polipo to address the unique learning needs of each single child with NDD.

Since the wide spread adoption of digital photography, people create many digital photos, often with the intention to use them for shared remembering. Practices around digital photography have changed along with advances in media sharing technologies such as smartphones, social media, and mobile connectivity. Although much research has been done at the start of digital photography, commercial available tools for media-supported shared remembering still have many limitations. The objective of our research is to explore design directions to better support the use of personal photos for collocated shared remembering and storytelling. In this paper we present seven design requirements that resulted from a redesign workshop with fifteen participants, and four design concepts that we developed based on those requirements. By reflecting on the requirements and designs we conclude with challenges for interaction designers to support collocated remembering practices, and possible directions to address these challenges.

Reminders are designed to support remembering actions or intentions to be performed later in time. Most technologies that have a reminding functionality do so by asking attention (e.g., by using auditory alerts or vibration patterns) from users at a certain point in time. Because of their obtrusive nature, the reminders of many (digital) prospective memory aids we use on a daily basis are hard to ignore, regardless of our ability and motivation to perform the reminded action or intention. In this paper, we present Wobble: an interactive cone-shaped artefact for reminding in the home environment. Wobble was designed to investigate peripheral reminders. Our results imply that wobble is best suitable for reminding intentions that do not require direct action but can be carried out over a period of time, which is a type of reminding currently not met by most electronic memory aids.

How can one design physical-digital hybrid artifacts as a whole, so they become meaningful, mediating elements within a persons’ embodied ‘Being-in-the-World? In this paper we explore two design cases in which we developed hybrids for daily routines of a person with autism spectrum disorder and for people with dementia. We reflected in an iterative way how the design evolved, and how our theoretical lens, grounded in embodied theory, helped to shape this evolution. In the final round of reflection, we compared the findings produced in the two case studies by looking for overall commonalities, which then formed the basis for the resulting design framework that we introduce in this paper. The framework consists of 7 principles, of which three support embodied activity in the here-and-now, another three support a developmental process over a longer time-scale, and the final principle focuses on reflection.

Constructive assemblies are tangible user interfaces (TUIs) that involve the interconnection of modular parts. As such, they offer a unique means to support us in our various and diverse activities. However, little information is available for understanding the intricacies of taking a modular, constructive assembly approach to TUI design. Based on an analysis of extensive data collected from interviews with eight world-class TUI experts, we propose a descriptive, conceptual framework to facilitate systematic investigation and critical consideration of constructive assemblies. The paper presents a lifecycle model for constructive assemblies and discusses their main design qualities and associated parameters. We demonstrate how this can be used to structure critical discussions by applying the principles to existing works and the design of our own constructive assembly.

Crafting interactive artifacts is typically associated with synthesizing, making, constructing, putting things together. In this paper we discuss how these activities can be contrasted with de-synthesizing activities that revolve around decomposition, dissection and taking things apart. Based on framings that emphasize how related practices are valuable in engineering processes we aim to unlock the potential of de-constructive engagements with interactive technologies as a material driven (design) practice. We propose un-crafting as a framework of four modes of taking interactive artifacts apart (i.e., un-crafting for material exposition, material inspiration, material inquiry, and material exploration) aiming to pinpoint de-constructive episodes inherent to design processes as well as to encourage the refinement of respective techniques and methods.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory promises tangible interaction designers to predict how physical object properties can express abstract content. Based on prior research on texture metaphors, we hypothesised that incidental sensations of roughness should influence the subjective evaluation of the user experience of digital content as well as the interpretation of an ambiguous social situation. In three studies users interacted with smooth and rough versions of cases of mobile devices (Study 1), trackpads (Study 2) and tangibles for interactive gameplay (Study 3). Despite convincing evidence collected in earlier studies, the results confirmed none of the hypotheses in any of the three studies. Possible reasons and their relevance for the use of metaphors in HCI and tangible interfaces are discussed and conclusions for further applications of rough/smooth metaphors are drawn.

Organic User Interfaces (OUIs) are flexible, actuated interfaces characterized by being aesthetically pleasing, intuitively manipulated and ubiquitously embedded in our daily life. We believe OUIs have specific qualities offering great potential for building interactive interiors and entire architectures that can react to users' needs, adapt to environmental conditions, communicate with each other, and transform their physical appearance accordingly. Herein we critically survey and examine the state-of-the-art for OUIs in interactive architecture research at three levels: 1) Architecture and Landscape, 2) Interior Design and 3) Interior Decoration. Furthermore, we introduce a manifesto for OUI Architecture in both exterior and interior design, arguing that OUIs should be at the core of a new interdisciplinary field driving research and practice in architecture. Finally, we provide a discussion of the ways forward for realizing this vision, articulating the key challenges for the HCI and TEI communities.

Rapid growth in the volume of cancer DNA sequencing data has not been matched by an increase in our ability to understand, explore, and interpret this data. There is a need for new tools that can enhance analyses in order to enable us to interpret the data, discover new or unexpected information, and ultimately form insights. We present Tangible mtDNA, an active tangible and tabletop system that allows multiple users with diverse expertise to collaborate in exploring and understanding mitochondrial DNA sequencing data in breast cancer patients. Five expert biologists evaluated the system and found it to be effective for data exploration and useful in supporting understanding, collaboration and discussion of DNA datasets.

We present BacPack, a tangible museum exhibit for exploring bio-design. BacPack utilizes tangible tokens on a large multitouch table display to allow visitors to participate in a playful bio-design activity—engineering bacteria for sustaining life on Mars. To understand the role of tangible tokens in facilitating engagement and learning with the exhibit, we developed and evaluated two versions of BacPack: one with tangible tokens and one that consists of only multitouch. Results from an evaluation in a museum indicate that tangible tokens provide additional opportunities for collaborative problem solving and impact learning through support for tinkering and experimentation. We discuss design considerations for exhibits that facilitate creative engagement and exploration with biology.

Little is understood on how to design wearables for education, especially for children. We explore how smartwatches may allow children to see the world through the lens of science. In our study, 20 children are tasked to record stories related to specific scientific concepts in their daily life and drawing from their embodied experiences using a commodity smartwatch. Our findings describe the types of ‘science stories’ that the children capture through the smartwatch, and how the stories relate to science. From our findings, we elicit seven areas of future research needed to catalyze the design of wearable apps to support informal science learning for children.

We present FoldMecha, a computer-aided design (CAD) system for exploratory construction of mechanical papercraft. FoldMecha enables students to design their own movements with simple mechanisms by modifying parameters and build physical prototypes. This paper describes the system, as well as associated prototyping methods that make the construction process easier and more adaptable to widely different creations. The paper also discusses a week-long workshop that we held with six teenagers using FoldMecha. The teens successfully designed and built their own mechanisms, and adapted them to a variety of creations. Throughout the workshop, they progressively achieved an advanced level of skill and understanding about mechanical movements.

Construction and sensing within malleable interfaces is usually limited by various constraints. Building the interface from diverse combinations of conductive and nonconductive, soft and hard materials, such as fabrics or foams combined with various sensors, complicates the manufacturing process and offers limited options in shaping. In this paper we propose "Unique Topographies for Acoustic Propagation'', or "UTAP", a novel approach for algorithmic design of malleable tangible interfaces. A fundamental feature of our approach is implementation of algorithmically generated topographically distinct lattices that, attached to piezoelectric (PZT) transducers, allow us to sense and recognize changes in a modulated acoustic signal on deformation and classify it into different interaction positions and states. Our systematic approach to manufacturing malleable interfaces opens possibilities to design various shapes that allow implementation in wide range of potential use cases. We demonstrate the UTAP approach on multiple interfaces built using laser cut and 3D printed lattice in conjunction with silicon compound moulding. Finally, we present a technical evaluation of our method based on studies of four distinct interface designs, assessing performance in sensing and localising simple deformations such as pressing on single and multiple spots, as well as different force levels and actions, including bending and twisting.

We contribute a new technique for fabricating highly customized 1D or 2D flex sensing surfaces on thin and flexible substrates. It enables designers and makers to easily, quickly and cheaply realize thin physical objects in custom shapes with an embedded deformation sensor. The deformation sensor is digitally designed and then fabricated with a single layer of conductive material in a single pass, using an off-the-shelf inkjet printer. We establish a design space and investigate how to realize flex sensing surfaces of varied geometries. In a technical evaluation, we demonstrate the technical feasibility of such sensors and investigate their response. Lastly, we demonstrate the practical applicability for tangible interfaces by presenting four example applications.

We explore how users use bend interactions when gaming with mobile flexible device, and investigate size differences between small and medium devices. We conducted a participatory experiment asking users to select bend gestures for nine tasks derived from gaming, grouped by navigational, action-specific or deformable manipulation. The results suggest pairing opposing tasks, such as going left and right, by gesture location, low user consensus with action-specific tasks, and strong association between the location of the gestures and the location of the stimuli, relating to the Simon Effect. We suggest guidelines for the design of game controls for flexible devices. We implemented the proposed gestures into six games using an interactive flexible prototype in our second study. Our results are similar between sizes, yet with an overall preference for the smaller device. We observed that hand positioning is an important usability issue to consider when designing flexible devices.

Building physical spaces interconnected with virtual worlds is a complex task that requires high technical knowledge and hours of programming and, as a matter of fact, is relegated to the work of expert professionals. The goal of this research is to lower the development threshold through the design of an end-user toolkit that provides a visual integrated environment for the rapid prototyping of cross-reality interactions. A user study with 8 participants showed the effectiveness of our approach and uncovered design opportunities and challenges for supporting the development of cross-reality environments.

This paper presents a novel methodology to digitally share the flavor experience of a glass of lemonade (or other similar beverages) remotely. The proposed method utilizes a sensor to capture valuable information (primarily, the color and the corresponding pH value) of the lemonade and a customized tumbler to virtually simulate these properties using plain water. Thus, the system consists of three main components: 1) the lemonade sensor, 2) the communication protocol, and 3) a customized tumbler, acting as the lemonade simulator. Initially, the sensor captures the color and the pH value of the lemonade and encodes this information based on an established communication protocol for wireless transmission. On receiving the information from the sensor, the lemonade simulator overlays the color of the drink on plain water using an RGB LED light and simulates sour taste sensations on the user's tongue via electrical stimulation. An experimental study was conducted to evaluate this novel approach of digitally teleporting a glass of lemonade: 1) to assess the pre-taste perceptions based on the user's visual perceptions of the colors (real vs. virtual lemonade) and 2) to assess the taste sensations (real vs. virtual lemonade). By simulating the experience of drinking a glass of lemonade through the digital reconstruction of the beverage's main visual and taste factors, the results from these experiments will be able to justify the feasibility of teleporting a glass of lemonade using this novel methodology.

We present, Window-Shaping, a tangible mixed-reality (MR) interaction metaphor for design ideation that allows for the direct creation of 3D shapes on and around physical objects. Using the sketch-and-inflate scheme, our metaphor enables quick design of dimensionally consistent and visually coherent 3D models by borrowing visual and dimensional attributes from existing physical objects, without the need for 3D reconstruction or fiducial markers. Through a preliminary evaluation of our prototype application we demonstrate the expressiveness provided by our design workflow, the effectiveness of our interaction scheme, and the potential of our metaphor.

Gaze is an important aspect in social communication. In this paper we present a first exploration of sharing gaze in the co-located physical world. LaserViz augments gaze in the physical world by means of an eyetracking enabled wearable device that laser beams the gaze position to real world objects. Based on an initial prototype, we explored its effects on shared gaze through a collaborative and competitive scenario in a co-located setting. This paper discusses the insights and implications following these explorations for the concept of shared gaze in the co-located physical world.

Designing for interactive performances is challenging both in terms of technology design, and of understanding the interplay between technology, narration, and audience interactions. Bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies afford new ways for artists to engage with audiences, and for audiences to become part of the artwork. Their deployment raises a number of issues for designers of interactive performances. This paper explores these issues by presenting five design ideas for interactive performance afforded by bio-sensing and bodily tracking (i.e. Microsoft Kinect) developed during two design workshops. We use these ideas to explore temporality of input, autonomy and control, and visibility of input in relation to the deployment of these technologies for interactive performances.

In this paper, we present Torrent, for Flutes and Water. Torrent is an embodied electroacoustic music composition written to commemorate a catastrophic local flood and the spirit of the citizens who united to overcome it. To create this music, we designed and built an interactive computer system to make audible and physical that which is usually hidden but ever-present in music-making: the musicians' muscle tension as they perform, think about, and feel their music. The Torrent system musifies and physicalizes the flutists’ muscle tension as live water sounds and movement that accompany the musicians as they perform. Semi-structured interviews and surveys have been conducted to understand the experiences of the performers and audience during this performance. The use of embodiment, as integral to the music itself, aspires to emphasize both means and end, body and mind, effort and achievement in the struggle of people united against the elements.

As an interdisciplinary group of developers, researchers, and designers, we are currently exploring collaborative co-located applications that invite users to engage with interactive audiovisual media using the mobile devices they carry with them. This work simultaneously investigates basic concepts of collaborative interactions and user experience, together with technical concepts of the platform and features of the applications. Allowing for rapid prototyping, easy deployment, and spontaneous participation, these explorations are entirely based on established and upcoming web standards such as WebSockets, WebGL, and Web Audio API. After an overview of basic concepts common to these applications, this paper describes Collective Loops, a prototypical interactive audiovisual installation that instantiates these concepts and allows for discussing important details in the design and implementation of applications of its kind. The final part of the article summarizes the incremental design and validation of two versions of the Collective Loops installation presented at public events.

This paper describes the Crackle exhibition, an interactive exhibition presented at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1977. We propose that it can be seen as a foreshadowing of aspects of the current state of the art of TEI avant la lettre; and that there might not only be value in examining historical work to construct a longer historical framework for TEI, but that the methods used in the construction of this exhibition might be useful in constructing new visions that foreshadow into the future from our current technological position. We present a detailed description of the exhibition based on documentation and interviews with the people who built it, and suggest that the current state of disappearing computers and embedded computational ability in everyday devices form an opportunity to imagine novel interaction paradigms that may transcend the digital in a similar way as the Crackle exhibition in 1977 transcended the electrical.

Although not consciously collected, bodily information shapes the way we construct meaning. By paying attention towards the subtle changes of the soma, it is possible to access part of the ongoing source of meaning and self-knowledge contained in the inner self. In this paper, we describe how the use of wearable devices to amplify direct perception in conjunction with the somatic technique Focusing can facilitate the articulation of the tacit dimension of people’s experiences. The perceptible feedback generated by wearable props opens up a dialogue space between the soma and intellect, acting as a facilitator to connect people with unknown aesthetic aspects of their personal stories. Beyond mere amplification of sensation, wearable technology can potentially assist in the ongoing human process of meaning-generation.