- Thanks.
I'm presenting this paper on behalf of myself,
my supervisor, Frank Vetere, who's in the audience,
and my co-supervisor, Shanton Chang.
The human body has emerged as more than
just a canvas for wearable devices.
Technological size and cost reductions,
as well as battery and power improvements,
has meant that items that were once external
have become wearable, or even insertable.
We use the term insertable to refer to
non-permanent, voluntary devices
contained within the boundaries of the human body,
in, through, or underneath the skin.
Insertables are characterized by agency and choice,
and are therefore generally used for non-medical purposes,
as opposed to implantable medical devices,
which are inserted into the body for restorative purposes,
and are generally not optional.
Many of these IMDs started as luggable devices
brought to the patient,
becoming wearable with technological advancements,
and then fully insertable.
For example, the pacemaker.
We see this trajectory in many other health devices.
We are now seeing insertable forms of
non-life-threatening health and more well-being products.
For example, contraceptives exist for females
in a range of different modes, including insertable,
as do menstrual aids.
This usually makes people really awkward,
but the next talk's about vaginas, so ...
(audience laughs)
Menstrual aids have wearable or insertable counterparts,
and a woman can choose
whichever she's more comfortable with.
Even incontinence aids now have wearable diapers
or a new insertable form for women.
Recently, insertable products are becoming
insertable devices by being incorporated
with sensors or other digital interactions.
This is microCHIPS, an RFID contraceptive
currently in development with MIT,
with the goal being that a woman can turn on and off
her contraceptive in between pregnancies.
We also have the Kickstarted LoonCup,
the Internet of Things smart menstrual cup,
and BabyPod, insertable speakers
to play music to your unborn baby.
These are real, available devices
that obviously have some consumer market,
but it's not all for the vagina.
There's an Internet of Things smart rectal thermometer,
and this is the North Star implant by Grindhouse Wetwear.
Wetwear because it goes into your body,
it's not software, it's not hardware.
While this is mainly more cosmetic,
it is turned on and off by a smart phone,
so it's sending digital signals through the human body.
The use of insertables has been seen for decades
in pop culture, particularly science-fiction.
From the cyber men of Doctor Who to the Terminator,
The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman,
there's a plethora of cyberpunk films
characterized by near future high-tech realities
where humans are rebuilt with bionic implants to restore
and even extend human capabilities into the superhuman.
The microchip in trope has accented science fiction.
Neo and Jackson in the Matrix, James Bond's health
is monitored and communicated via a chip,
Quaid is implanted with a tracking chip in Total Recall,
and even the T-Rex in Jurassic World
realizes she has a tracking microchip and bites it out.
The list goes on.
While microchip tracking is not technically possible,
the government is not tracking you with hidden microchips,
the concept of insertables is no longer
just contained to science-fiction.
Academic musings have been around since 1967
with Dr. Alan Weston speaking of the possibility of
permanent implacements of tagging devices in or on the body.
This sentiment has been echoed many times.
It's not a big jump to say,
"Okay, you have a wearable, why not just embed the device?"
X-BT researcher, Peter Cochrane, foretold of a day
where chips are not just worn around the neck,
but are actually implanted in a human's skin.
From a purely rational point of view, it would make sense
to implant a small chip under the skin,
rather than have it on a card that can easily be lost.
Such discussion is no longer hypothetical.
To give you a fine abridged history,
we start with Professor Kevin Warwick's
Cyborg 1.0 experiment in 1998.
He inserted an RFID chip for a time box period
to open his office doors and activate the lighting.
In 2001, Dr. Richard Seelig self-inserted
identification chips after seeing first responders
to the Twin Towers writing their badge numbers
on themselves for identification.
In 2004, he received FDA approval for human insertion
of these microchips, brand named VeriChip.
These were used to store medical and health information.
Come into the hospital unconscious and be scanned
to know your medical history and allergies.
Over its tenure, approximately 2,000 chips were inserted
in humans, and 900 hospitals equipped to read them.
VeriChips were also re-appropriated
for some notable purposes, including employers
of the Mexico Attorney General's office using it
for access to secure locations,
and 100 staff and patrons of the now-defunct
Barcelona Baja Beach Club VIP Program,
for access and point-of-sale payments.
These very chips, like microchips used in pets or livestock,
have a bio-bond coding,
and this means that they bind to the tissue
so they don't move, but it also makes removal very invasive,
if not difficult,
if not impossible.
The first hobbyist to insert an RFID chip was Amal Graafstra
in 2005 and he sourced non-permanent chips
without this coding so that they could
be more easily removed.
He now sells these chips online
and have sold thousands of units thus far,
and engendered the hobbyist wave that we're now seeing.
We know that people are inserting devices into their bodies,
but what and why was not known at scale.
Who uses insertables?
We did 17 in-depth interviews.
They were mostly male,
with only three identifying as female,
with ages ranging from 18 to mid 40s.
Participants were from Australia, New Zealand,
and the United States.
While their technical and digital literacy did vary,
many of them worked in highly technical fields.
Our participants had a total of 47 devices,
currently within their bodies,
not including those that have been removed
or replaced for upgrades.
Participants had magnets, used for interacting with
electronic and digital objects,
NFC and RFID microchips
for authentication and authorization,
access, storing information, and temperature readings,
and bespoke spoke devices for experimentation.
The RFID and NFC microchips
are about the size of a grain of rice.
They're inserted using a large gauge syringe,
like those used in body piercings or pet micro-chipping,
and once inserted, they're invisible to the naked eye.
This person doesn't even have a scar.
Similarly, magnets are millimeters small,
so I've used a Australian coin,
not the best for scale, but teeny tiny,
and they're generally inserted using a scalpel,
and are also invisible once healed.
I'm pretty sure that's the finger it was in,
but it could be the other one.
You can't even tell the difference between those fingers.
You can read more about how these are inserted,
where they're inserted,
where they get the chips from, in our paper.
The insertion position is generally selected based on use
with form-following function, so the standard position
for a microchip is in the webbing of the hand.
It's away from vital tissue, it's quite protected
'cause it's quite squishy, and it also enables
natural interactions with sensors or with a foam.
Only two participants deviated from this standard position
to using bio-foam chips, which they placed in their forearms
for ease of strapping a reader to it,
'cause it's not necessarily going to work on your hand.
Magnets were commonly positioned at nerve endings,
usually in the fingertips, to pick up electromagnetic waves
and create new sensations.
Magnets in other locations were used
to afford specific interactions.
A magnet in the wrist, that a wearable could be placed over,
to digitally interact with it.
Magnets in the tragus of the ear for audio sensations,
and the lovers magnet configuration, used for couples
to join hands on the back while holding.
Instead of placing a device on the body when needed,
and taking it off again when no longer required,
we're seeing people augment the body in a semi-permanent way
with an insertable device.
This augmentation is typically not visible to others,
comparable to those who choose to use contact lenses
rather than wear glasses.
What does the use of these devices mean
for the future of HCI and UX?
Insertables offer interesting possibilities
for the quantified self movement.
They stay out of the way during recreational activities,
they're waterproof by nature, and they do not become
uncomfortable with movement, or chafing, or sweat,
unlike some wearables.
Two participants were using insertables
for body temperature readings,
with one trying to set up his air-conditioning
to automatically adjust based on this reading
rather than ambient temperature controls.
Our participants have re-purposed old technologies,
NFC and RFID, for new input applications
from within their bodies.
The lack of a suitable ecosystem for insertable devices
remains an ongoing challenge.
NFC and RFID are not currently widespread input options,
often requiring additional peripherals,
or making of specialised devices, to receive input.
Our participants have gone through some effort to modify
systems to accept their insertable is as valid input.
If these formats were more popular input technologies,
as we're seeing there in the Android phone
and then now in newest Windows phones,
users can access systems more readily.
This includes home access, work access, and car access,
replacing luggable keys, wearable dongles with insertables.
It may seem trivial, but never being able to forget
your keys certainly has benefits for some.
You can never get locked out, you never have to call
a locksmith, or try and crawl through the cat flap,
you never have to leave work because your child
has locked themselves out.
As one participant put it,
"I was super-duper thankful that I went through this small
"tiny piece of pain for the guarantee that my key would
"always be with me as long as I have my hand,
"which I've never ever forgotten.
"It only takes one or two times of making a trip
"that's already too long and having to drive
"the whole way back, or deal with it for the day,
"to make you realize, a small pinch and this is solved?
"Yeah, give me the pinch."
Many of our participants claimed their insertables provided
increased usability over existing solutions.
Use of insertables as input to existing interfaces remove
the need to stop and interact with devices,
making them natural user interfaces
with intuitive and seamless interactions.
They were using them as input triggers
to automatically and seamlessly launch other applications
without interacting with the device.
Just like wearables, interactions with insertables
are efficient, as users do not have to carry a device
nor stop what they are doing to interact.
For example, one participant set up
the coordinates of his lab.
"It made everything easier.
I didn't have to type in or interact with the interface.
"I just had to run my hand over my phone
"and I was on my way."
Our participants expressed frustration
with managing wearables.
They no longer wanted to be bothered by carrying or wearing
objects they could forget and that they had to manage,
recharge, put on, take off.
Some found wearables uncomfortable,
and others didn't even wear their wedding rings.
Participants had eliminated keys, dongles,
and external devices, by relegating these
input and storage functions, to insertables.
Our participants opted into insertables.
For them, the benefits outweighed any pain or discomfort.
They didn't want to manage keys, wallets, purses,
and phones, manage glasses, put wearables on and off.
They try to minimize the number of things
they worry about in the day.
One participant referred to this as the Tamagotchi effect.
It is true, however, that not everyone is gonna be satisfied
with inserting a device into their body.
Gluing RFID tags onto the nails, as you may have seen
coaches yesterday at the
Body
Beauty Tech Booth,
is far less controversial
and threatening for the wider populace.
Wearable and insertable devices can coexist with one another
just as wearable and insertable forms of the menstrual aids
and the contraceptives exist, with users being able to
choose whichever they are more comfortable with
and whatever meets their needs.
As devices are miniaturized,
they are integrated into our everyday experience.
They become a part of us.
In this era of ubiquitous computing, there is a blurring
of the line between technology and ourselves,
and this line becomes even blurrier when the technology
is physically inside us.
Participants spoke of the impermanent permanence
of insertables.
They can be removed, but they cannot be forgotten.
They wanted devices that became a part of them.
Some for convenience, others, not satisfied with a purely
biological body and saw this as the next stage
of human evolution, and what was available at the moment,
rather than science fiction.
Clearly, insertable devices are ubiquitous.
Small and unobstructed, comfortable to the
point that they forget their existence.
Participants associated the capabilities
of the device with themselves.
They spoke of their abilities as, "I can,"
rather than attributing to the device.
Participants took their capabilities for granted
as they became the new norm, and often said,
"It's weird that I can't unlock my door with my left hand,"
or forgetting that other people couldn't do this.
Some participants have also begun experimenting
with insertables to receive data in a hands-free manner
without having to stop that they are doing.
Two participants were experimenting with the use
of insertables for more than just a haptic notification
that another device needs your attention,
but actually transmitting the data itself.
One application was a depth center,
transmitting, from a wearable over the magnet,
of the proximity of objects.
They were able to walk around the room successfully
with their eyes closed, a proof of concept to
replace senses in the blind.
Leveraging insertable devices in this manner
can be used to achieve a truly hands-free, eyes-free
information receipt for individuals
with and without impairments.
While some were using it for sensory ...
While others were using it for sensory extension,
taking them beyond what humans can naturally do.
Many participants using magnetic magnets were doing it
to feel electromagnetic waves and add a new sense.
Two participants used their tragi magnets,
along with a wearable coil,
to create and transmit sound waves
that the magnets then picked up,
essentially making invisible headphones
that sounds like it's coming from inside your head,
rather than through your ears,
while keeping your ears open for any external noise
that may be happening.
The aim for this wasn't just music.
The pioneer of this configuration is losing his sight,
and wanted to augment by replacing that sense
with echolocation.
Using insertables for sensory improvement
offers new modalities.
The body is roughly two square meters of skin
as a canvas for devices.
The insides of the body are no longer just limited
to implantable medical devices, as some individuals
have begun to experiment using the 66 internal liters
as a platform for insertable devices.
As acceptance grows, insertables may become
a device mode of choice for future noise.
Thank you. (coughs)
(audience applauds)
(coughs)
- [Paul] Hi there.
- Hi.
- [Paul] This is Paul Stohmeier from Queens ...
I used to be Queens, now Copenhagen University.
Thanks for doing this. I really enjoyed this.
Now we've identified, there's this area,
and there's people doing things that are new to many of us,
what can we as a research community learn from this,
and how can we as a research community
help this community in doing things,
like what are the next three things
we need to do to make their stuff cooler?
Or to invite them into our community?
- Yeah.
Thanks, that's a great question.
They somewhat don't want to be a part of our community,
'cause we're too slow and fuddy-duddy for them,
which was a quote from one of my participants,
but there are obviously things, like it's quite hard
to program them at the moment,
and this is why it's mainly technical people doing this,
so there are definitely solutions that we could develop
to make it easier, which would open this up
to more people to be able to use.
It's also an invisible interface, so we're working with UX
and HCI without a single pixel, which is new for me,
but really interesting challenges.
I think we can definitely learn about
the best UI's no UI from this.
- [Paul] Is there a list of people you might want to see
next year? (laughing)
- Yes, so what we're doing next is meeting the people
who make these insertables and try to find out
how they do it, and I guess come up with
principles of design for these type of things.
Yes?
(distant voice talking)
Yeah, I'll be around after
if you wanna chat and ask questions.
Thank you.
(applauding)