- Thank you for the introduction.
My name is Elena Marquez Segura.
This is Laia Turmo Vidal.
And we have Asree Rostami over there,
and Annika Waern, our Supervisor.
We come from Uppsala University and Mobile Life
at Stockholm University.
Designing considering the aesthetic experience
is challenging.
It is difficult, but it is important.
And since there's a so-called third wave in HCI,
there has been a marked focus on aesthetic experience
that technology can enable.
And this challenge has been heightened when research
and practices have focused on embodied experiences.
Yet, often it remains secondary consideration
in HCI practice.
And we think this is particularly the case
with movement based interactive systems
that have been primarily technology centered.
And by that, we mean that the technology
has been the focus of design, but also the main driver
for the design process.
And this has often meant that technology limitations
have constrained design possibilities.
In the paper, we talk about some of these issues.
The fact that some important interaction and aspects
have been pushed to the background,
or the fact that the body gets too instrumentalized
and constrained and how these sometimes make
the design vocabulary that we have,
is that it would narrow.
And most importantly, the fact that movements
and bodied experiences are brought too late
in the design process.
So, we operate in the design domain of movement based play
that happens in a co-located and social setting.
Our design approach is technology supported,
contrasted to technology sustained.
These are concepts introduced by Waern.
And the difference between them is that with
technology supported approaches, you have the technology
supporting partially the experience.
Where compared to technology sustained approaches
where you have the technology responsible for
sustaining the whole experience.
So, our approach is technology supported,
but the question then arises.
If the technology is just one aspect
that supports the experience, what else can support it?
In previous papers, we were talking about
the design resources in this design domain.
And we think that there are these other ones.
So, you have physical and digital artifacts.
You have what we call the social-spatial setting,
that is the role of the players, the way they are
distributed in the space,
and also the rules of the game.
With our paper, we had the goal of...
We focused on the ideation phase,
at the beginning of the design process.
And what we wanted to do is to,
we were thinking about how can you implement,
how can you take these technologies to position approach?
And in particular, we wanted to bring movements
and bodily experiences early in the design process,
and to use play and playfulness to spur creativity.
There's a bunch of ideation methods that you all know.
You have the personas, the scenarios,
and we are particular interested in
these embodied ideation methods.
Some methods that make use of the bodily and situated
experience of designers and informants to inform design.
We introduce embodied sketching as a characterization
of design practices in the domain of embodied interaction
that foregrounds the embodied experience
for the exploration and the design for particularly
interesting physical and social activities.
So, how do you do that?
By physically engaging with simple actions and activities
that are constituent of or essential to
the bodied activity that you design for.
And by looking into and trying how different
design resources integrate and blend together
to support and give rise to play activities.
In the paper, we have three different instantiations
of these embodied sketching practice.
And here, we are going to focus mainly on the first one.
- So, our first case was conducted in a joint
international research collaboration with the people
at the Exertion Games Lab,
at the RMIT in Australia.
We wanted to build on the core activity of hanging,
in which which we were interested,
and the Exertion Games Lab group had already been
explored and including a game called Hanging Off a Bar.
The goal was to generate a collection of game ideas
that use the concept of hanging.
So, five designer researchers,
four PhD students, and one at the masters level,
participated in the workshop.
We hung from a nylon in the ceiling at TRX,
which is a famous artifact that enables
hanging and suspension.
Moreover, we also brought in other player artifacts.
For instance, a Pilates ball, Styrofoam swords,
a basketball, and a skateboard.
And we also introduced basic principles from brainstorming.
Like all ideas would be welcome, the more the better.
And we told participants to withhold criticism
and not to over think about feasibility issues.
Furthermore, we also introduced turn-taking
as away of regulating participation.
And we encourage to a show don't tell attitude,
and to explore ideas until exhaustion.
So, then ideas emerged from the 30 minute workshop,
which we present here in what we call the
Bodystorming Braid.
Where we also depict artifacts used,
the technology in vision, and the rules governing play
among other things.
We call it a game idea, an embodied sketch,
which is the smallest unit represented here.
Some of these embodied sketches were very similar
to one another.
And they emerge as variation to the first one.
So, they're here group together in a note.
That you can see in the zoom, bits.
Technology was also quite present during the workshop.
For instance, participant and vision, what technology
would do in some of the ideas.
Like in one of the embodied sketches where participants
and vision projections on the floor,
that had to be avoided by somebody on a skateboard.
Participants also simulated technology often,
by using the artifacts around to fake its functionality,
which allowed them to experience potential strengths
and weaknesses.
In general, the ideation process was mainly shaped
by the artifacts and the core mechanics.
Some ideas visibly worked,
which could be seen by the reaction of the participants.
Whereas others obviously didn't,
and they were rapidly iterated.
An example of an idea that worked, is depicted
in the sequence of images that you can see
at the left of the slide.
In this idea, the participant had to step on top
of the Pilates ball, while grabbing the TRX
in order to try to maintain the balance.
All the participants tried out this idea,
and engaged with it longer than with other ones.
And finally, in other cases,
as some ideas requires some tweaking.
Like an example also depicted here.
Where a person was driving the TRX, and he was, supposed to,
or she, to avoid envision projections on the floor,
while on top of the skateboard.
The skateboard constrained the movement of the player
too much.
And participants decided it would be good to try
to use another artifact, in this case a ball.
So, this case illustrates what it means to use
embodied sketching early in the design process.
We managed to open up the design space
with a collection of game ideas that had hanging
at their core.
Moreover, we were also able to sketch ideas
that make use of different arrangements of
a variety of design resources.
And we were also able to understand how these resources
intertwined to support its embodied sketch.
This case is an example of how designers
can shift the focus of design attention
from the technology to the activity.
Allowing them to think about other ways of using
different arraignments of design resources
in service of the activity.
These resources go beyond the technology,
including physical artifacts and the players themselves.
And this is our second case, which we call
Sensitizing Designers,
that deepens in the insight obtained from the previous
body storming case.
The previous case was useful in creating an understanding
how different artifacts can contribute to arrange
of working game ideas.
However, important aesthetic aspects of experience
of hanging were under-explored, in particular
to the first person, some aesthetic perspective.
And what was interesting and exhilarating from a felt
and lift body perspective.
Therefore, the second workshop was developed
as a way to delve deeper into these aspects.
The workshop revolved around a somatic practice
that makes heavy use of hanging,
which is called anti-gravity fitness.
And you can see an image of this in the slide.
One of us go out there as an instructive anti-gravity,
and we organized the class that focused around hanging
and suspending the body weight in different forms
and using a hammock.
The idea was to use the short experience
in a later brainstorming, to uncover interesting
experiential qualities and concepts.
In the paper, we have more details about the results
from the session, including several themes
about the felt experience, relating to the different
elements that sustain the activity.
Such as spatial and social aspects,
and as well as the hammock itself.
This case, as well as the previous one,
are examples of embodied sketching practices
that focus on physical engaging with simple actions
and activities that are constituent of,
or essential to the bodily activity that you design for.
In particular, this case example
focused on the use of a shared lived experience,
so sensitize designers, to salient attribute
of their in the moment, felt experience,
which can then be used in design.
- The last case we call participatory embodied sketching.
This was part of the design iteration
of the Oriboo, that little toy there.
That's a movement based game platform,
created by Ji Moen,
and commercialized by Movinto Fun.
And the device is a ball-shaped interactive toy
that runs on that leash that you see there,
that you would hold with your hands wide open.
And it runs on the leash, and gives the user feedback
in terms of the movement,
and then it's visuals, the eyes, on the display,
and also sounds.
And it can sense the participant's movements.
The toy was meant to encourage children to explore
and expand their bodily repertoire of movements,
to explore the space.
However, the already implemented games
had not met this expectation.
Firstly, the games encouraged artifact focused
type of interaction like you see in the picture.
As the players had to rely heavily on the device display
four feet back and guidance.
Secondly, the repertoire of movements that the games require
was very constrained to the limitations of the technologies.
At the point in the design process,
when this embodied sketching was organized,
we already had in place, several small games
implemented in the technology.
And we wanted to try and see how this original games
could be enriched by using different play buttons
and social-spatial arrangements of the players.
We also wanted to see how the children responded
to design constructs that were more or less constrained
by other design resources than the technology.
We organized a series of workshops in which we first
let the children play freely with a mobile platform,
like you see on your left.
The different variations of the games.
And then, we created some older variations
that made use of the implemented functionality
of the device, that you see, the second picture
in the center, is the collaborative version
of the first game.
And then, you have the competitive variation.
So, two aspects I want to highlight from this
embodied sketching session.
One was the fact that as designers,
we could tweak some aspects of the games on the spot.
So, since the design resources that you have
are more than the technology,
the technology was the only component
that was kind of fixed.
The rest we could change,
according to the effect and the reaction of the children,
which was very, very useful.
What we weren't expecting was that the children
would do that themselves.
And how could we miss that?
Of course they did.
They were tweaking the game,
so that the play activity suited what they wanted to do
at the moment, and they even created games.
So, they realized here that when they placed the
Oriboo in a vertical position, the toy would move up.
So, they started created races.
Some takeaways from these embodied sketching.
This workshop could very well be a follow up
of a body storming one.
It can be held early in the design process,
but once the technology is somehow in place,
even if it's as a mock up or a prototype,
the technology is used as a fixed design resource,
that it is tested.
But most importantly, that it is used as a base
upon which new designs can emerge.
And these designs include other important resources
that are left open for appropriations such as
the rules that govern play,
and they've done social-spatial configurations of the base.
So, our embodied sketching design practice
is similar to other embodied ideation methods
presented in the background of the paper,
in that they all make use of this embodied approach
to design, even how they harness the situated
physical and social context, for creating
embodied design ideas.
However, there are five characterizing principles
that we want to highlight here.
That differentiate our design practice from others.
First, embodied sketching is activity-centered,
in that the goal is to design enjoyable,
social, and physical activities that technology supported,
instead of sustained.
Second, an important difference is that in embodied
sketching, contextual elements are used as design resources.
And not only as a back drop against which you evaluate
your design ideas.
Then, we take advantage of a very physical
and hands on engagement of designers
with a non-descriptive activity.
In older methods, you see often how they make use
of scripted scenarios or role playing activities.
Then, we use play and movement, not only as goals,
but also as design vehicles,
as tools to get to those goals.
And finally, previous methods emphasize early prototype
in testing.
And while we focus on initial explorative ideation phases
as way to open the design space at the experiential level.
I think we got the 15 minutes.
Thank you very much, we are ready to take your questions.
(applause)