Danielle Wilde

When designing material interactions using digital and other technologies, ideation and development timelines can go out of sync. In this paper we discuss how a crafts-driven approach to wearable technologies can sensitise researchers to novel ways of moving forward when faced with such a challenge. We identify 'no-tech' prototyping as a powerful paradigm for ideating wearable technologies when the technologies are not yet specified or available; and we describe four craft-based conceptual lenses - an approach, expression, dialogue and language - that support the development of no-tech prototypes at a range of resolutions. The Poetic Kinaesthetic Interface project (PKI) serves as our case for study. PKI aims to support material innovation in the context of wearable technologies for enhanced embodied interactions. At a crucial point in an early phase of PKI we were stopped short by a delay in data delivery. Faced with an impasse, we turned to our crafts to find a way forward. To support our discussion, we unpack the notions of no-tech prototyping and advanced material interactions; we describe the PKI Phase I prototypes and discuss the value of working at different resolutions of conceptual and material finish. We then lay out our four lenses and reflect on how each of these lenses enable us to remain in a state of unknowing and continue to not only craft our way through our impasse, but deepen our embodied inquiry into the development of experientially rich material interactions. The resulting extended, reflective, embodied, craft-based approach to material innovation is supporting greater public engagement with our core research concerns, as well as an expanded vision of how to effectively work towards material innovation. This research contributes to exploratory material-based and craft-informed interaction design and wearable technologies development.

ABSTRACT Sustainability in (Inter)Action provides a forum for innovative thought, design, and research in the area of interaction design and environmental sustainability. The forum explores how HCI can contribute to the complex and interdisciplinary efforts to ...

Physical engagement with data necessarily influences the reflective process. However, the role of interactivity and narration are often overlooked when designing and analyzing personal data physicalizations. We introduce Narrative Physicalizations, everyday objects modified to support nuanced self-reflection through embodied engagement with personal data. Narrative physicalizations borrow from narrative visualizations, storytelling with graphs, and engagement with mundane artifacts from data-objects. Our research uses a participatory approach to research-through-design and includes two interdependent studies. In the first, personalized data physicalizations are developed for three individuals. In the second, we conduct a parallel autobiographical exploration of what constitutes personal data when using a Fitbit. Our work expands the landscape of data physicalization by introducing narrative physicalizations. It suggests an experience-centric view on data physicalization where people engage physically with their data in playful ways, making their body an active agent during the reflective process.

From cooking and growing to shopping and dining, digital technology has become a frequent companion in our everyday food practices. Smart food technologies such as online diet personalization services and AI-based kitchenware offer promises of better data-driven food futures. Yet, human-food automation presents certain risks, both to end consumers and food cultures at large. This one-day workshop aims to question emerging food-tech trends and explore issues through creative food-tech crafting and performative dining activities. We will craft, taste, and debate edible prototypes reflecting on diverse socio-political issues in contemporary food-tech innovation. We posit everyday human-food practices as a relatable context to discuss broader societal issues underlying the growing role of technology and data in commonplace human activities. The workshop aims to gather an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners keen on exploring the diverse roles and potential futures of technology design in everyday life.

hipDisk is a wearable interface that extends the hips and torso horizontally to give the moving body musical capabilities. The device prompts wearers to move in strange ways, bypassing norms of self-constraint, to actuate sound. The result is sonically and physically ungainly, yet strangely compelling, and often prompts spontaneous laughter. hipDisk emerged from an embodied, performative research approach. It began as a single user device, and evolved to support social interaction and co-creation, as well as creatively engaged, embodied discovery and learning. Using, and also observing hipDisk in use, affords insight into how ungainly, embodied, performative fun may be a powerful vehicle for embodied knowledge generation and learning.

New materials and technologies offer the potential for highly innovative systems. Yet also challenge us to expand how we design. ‘Post-disciplinary embodied ideation’ is an emerging approach to knowledge generation and exchange amongst designers, scientists and the public. Its purpose is to enrich the conception and design of innovative on-body systems, informed – yet unconstrained – by current knowledge. In this paper I describe three approaches to engaging the public in postdisciplinary embodied ideation. In each case, the use of video, photography, audio, and other forms of documentation are carefully curated to support and fruitfully disrupt – rather than interfere with – the aesthetic experience. So, while micro-analysis of video and audio might promise deep insights, significant challenges remain if such approaches are to be effectively leveraged. By opening this work up to the research community I hope to launch a conversation about how post-disciplinary approaches to embodie...

Wearable technologies draw on a range of disciplines, including fashion, textiles, HCI, and engineering. Due to differences in methodology, wearables researchers can experience gaps or breakdowns in values, goals, and vocabulary when collaborating. This situation makes wearables development challenging, even more so when technologies are in the early stages of development and their technological and cultural potential is not fully understood. We propose a common ground to enhance the accessibility of wearables-related resources. The objective is to raise awareness and create a convergent space for researchers and developers to both access and share information across domains. We present CHIMERA, an online search interface that allows users to explore wearable technologies beyond their discipline. CHIMERA is powered by a Wearables Taxonomy and a database of research, tutorials, aesthetic approaches, concepts, and patents. To validate CHIMERA, we used a design task with multidisciplin...

This issue of Temes de Disseny focuses on the contribution of design in promoting caring for life in all its manifestations and for the environment. In other words, caring for the entire planet. At a time when human health is in the spotlight more than ever, it is important to consider design within an interplay of different disciplines as societies worldwide strive to meet the Sustainable Development Goals while staying within the planetary boundaries. The aim of this issue is to bring a series of design and research perspectives to the forefront to plant the seed for new ideas about what might help designers become agents of change in the global health landscape.

When designing material interactions using digital and other technologies, ideation and development timelines can go out of sync. In this paper we discuss how a crafts-driven approach to wearable technologies can sensitise researchers to novel ways of moving forward when faced with such a challenge. We identify 'no-tech' prototyping as a powerful paradigm for ideating wearable technologies when the technologies are not yet specified or available; and we describe four craft-based conceptual lenses - an approach, expression, dialogue and language - that support the development of no-tech prototypes at a range of resolutions. The Poetic Kinaesthetic Interface project (PKI) serves as our case for study. PKI aims to support material innovation in the context of wearable technologies for enhanced embodied interactions. At a crucial point in an early phase of PKI we were stopped short by a delay in data delivery. Faced with an impasse, we turned to our crafts to find a way forward....

Research suggests that play is an influential factor in the eating experience. Yet, playing with food remains a common taboo. We explore ways that eating and play might unfold in gastronomic restaurants. We review current practices and conduct mixed-method interviews with a range of stakeholders, using the PLEX framework for playful interactions to identify limitations of current approaches, as well as opportunities to take the convergence of gastronomy and play further. Our findings point to four design opportunities to extend playfulness in gastronomy: (1) eliciting play beyond surprise and make-believe; (2) facilitating socialization through emergent forms of play; (3) using common eating rituals as inspiration for gastronomy; and (4) using play to enhance degustation. Our contribution extends understanding of the potential of playful gastronomy for chefs and restauranteurs, by positing new experiences for diners. Figure 1. (l-r): elBulli’s Las especias; The Fat Duck’s Sound of the Sea; Mugaritz’s Kaolin Potatoes; Alinea’s Balloon; El Celler de Can Roca’s Tocaplats. 3 THE DIVERSITY OF PLAY Play is ambiguous (Sutton-Smith, 1997) and difficult to measure (McGonigal, 2011). Play can be liberty and invention, fantasy and discipline (Caillois, 1961). Whatever its form, it is ultimately fun (Huizinga, 1950). Crucially, the perception of fun is highly subjective, so play can be extremely diverse. The PLEX framework (Arrasvuori, Boberg, & Korhonen, 2010; figure 2) proposes 22 types of playful experience. Using that framework, we find that Regol’s idea of play-food covers only three forms of play: captivation, discovery, and sensation (figure 2, in green). Other gastronomic dishes (c.f. figure 1) elicit another seven forms of play: Challenge, Competition, Expression, Fantasy, Fellowship, Humour and Thrill (figure 2, in yellow). There is clearly more to play than currently on offer in gastronomic restaurants. Outside the context of gastronomy, culturally framed eating rituals often leverage play to support social interaction and active participation, neither of which appear in the PLEX framework. The Tortell de Reis, for example—a traditional Catalan dish eaten at Epiphany (January 6)—contains two ceramic figures: a king and a bean. The person who finds the king in their slice is “king” for the day; the person who finds the bean must pay for the cake. Pimientos del Padrón—a variety of green peppers that may or may not be extremely spicy—are also a source of mirth in group situations, where the thrill of not knowing whether the chosen pepper will be spicy is enhanced through social interaction. Both of these popular dishes afford social play. 4 THE LANGUAGE OF GASTRONOMY 4.1 The unidirectional model According to elBulliFoundation (2017) the gastronomic experience is a unidirectional transmitterreceiver communication process (Shannon, 1948). In this model (c.f. figure 3) a restaurant designs and elaborates dishes using a particular culinary language; a diner receives and eats those dishes. The entire experience is controlled down to the smallest detail; the focus held tightly on the food, and the social aspect left to the side. As per Regol (2009), the role of the diner is to “sit and contemplate.” To understand if this model is representative of broad understandings of gastronomy, we interviewed: a chef, a maître d’, a gastronomist, two food enthusiasts, and a non-expert, using a 5-step mixed participatory method, as described below. 4.2 Stakeholder interview structure 1. The participant was invited to a meal, in a setting chosen to raise tensions. For example, the non-expert was invited to a Michelin-starred restaurant, and the maître d’ to a random cafeteria for a sandwich. We thus used destabilisation (Shklovsky, [1917] 1965), to open our guests to exchange un-filtered views (Wilde, 2011). 2. We presented the guest-interviewee with four empty jam jars and a packet of M&Ms. Their task was to distribute the M&Ms between the jars to represent their understanding of gastronomy. Three jars were labelled with key motivations to eat: degustation, socialization, and nutrition (Douglas, 1972; Warde & Martens, 2000; Ochs & Shohet, 2006). The fourth jar’s label was blank, to enable our guest-interviewee to add a value of their own (figure 4). 3. We proceeded with the meal. 4. We offered the M&M-filled jars as petit-fours, to accompany coffee, thus facilitating a smooth Figure 4. Jam jars with M&Ms, the container to the right, labelled by the guest-interviewee as “reflective interaction.” Figure 2. The PLEX framework (Arrasvuori, Boberg, & Korhonen, 2010). GREEN highlights: experiences embraced by Regol’s play-food; YELLOW: those embraced by current gastronomic dishes; RED: those not currently represented in gastronomic restaurants. Figure 3. El Bulli’s restaurant–diner communication model. transition from open conversation to a more focused reflection. We then used tangible interviewing tools (Clatworthy et. al., 2014) to…

The boundaries between 'the digital' and our everyday physical world are dissolving as we develop more physical ways of interacting with computing. This forum presents some of the topics discussed in the colorful multidisciplinary field of tangible and embodied interaction. Eva Hornecker, Edito

Embodied design ideation (EDI) practices work with relationships between body, material and context to enliven design and research potential. Methods are often idiosyncratic and – due to their physical nature – not easily transferred. As independent researchers, and as collaborators, we have been engaging with this problematic for some time. At CHI2017 we will present a framework that enables designers to understand, describe and contextualise EDI practices in ways that can be understood by peers, as well as those new to embodied ideation. Our framework affords discussion of embodied design actions that leverage the power of estrangement. In developing our framework we engaged with numerous researchers who use estrangement as a key activator in embodied design ideation. We thus bring to the workshop (1) a framework to understand and leverage the power of estrangement in embodied design ideation, (2) our individual approaches to EDI, developed over many years of research practice and...

We 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 ...

The fashion industry is permeated by overconsumption. Mass production, low prices and speed of turnover of trends lead consumers to perceive clothes as disposable objects. The resulting throwaway culture adds to the already problematic environmental impact of the fashion industry. To shift this state of affairs, we propose wardrobe interventions, a method that uses experimental design practices to collect insights and promote more active engagements between wearers and worn by leveraging the notion of material agency. We describe two projects used to develop and verify the method, to demonstrate how foregrounding the agency of clothes can enhance values embedded in wearer-worn relationships, and potentially shift consumer actions.