Andreas Bischof

Loaded Dice: Exploring the Design Space of Connected Devices with Blind and Visually Impaired People

This paper proposes Loaded Dice, two wireless connected Arduino based, 3D-printed cubes consisting of various sensors in one cube and various actuators in the other. It is an interactive tool intended to support co-design activities with blind and visually impaired people within the design space of smart connected devices. The design rationale and design process that led to the implementation of the interactive co-design tool are described as well as the interactive tool itself and an analysis of how co-designers utilized it within a co-design workshop to explore the technology of smart and connected devices. Findings from this workshop are presented. The proposed interactive tool and supporting co-design activities proved to be empowering and engaging to imagine and ideate future technologies based around the IoT.

Tangible Disparity - Different Notions of the Material as Catalyst of Interdisciplinary Communication

Communicating tangible technology designs hinges on an adequate notion of materiality. However, academic disciplines involved employ wildly differing notions of the material. This issue effects communicative boundaries within interdisciplinary teams tasked with development of tangible digital artefacts. In order to address this problem, we provide an analysis of differing disciplinary modes of conceptualisation and theorisation. Following these considerations, we discuss theoretical artefacts able to serve as communicative interfaces between the disciplines in question.

Smart Connected Sensations: Co-Creating Smart Connected Applications through Distributed Serendipity

This demo presents Loaded Dice, two wirelessly connected Arduino based, 3D-printed cubes consisting of sensors in one die and actuators in the other. It is an interactive tool to support co-design activities. This demo focuses on a work-in-progress application during the conference for participants to explore the design space of smart connected devices by rolling the dice in different rooms for exploring serendipitous qualities of smart connected sensations.

Exploring the Playfulness of Tools for Co-Designing Smart Connected Devices: A Case Study with Blind and Visually Impaired Students

In this paper we compare two tools for co-designing smart connected devices on their playfulness. First littleBits, a commercially available tool and Loaded Dice, a self developed tool, are introduced. Second frameworks for comparing the playfulness of such tools are briefly reviewed. We then report on co-design sessions we conducted with blind and visually impaired students and compare those sessions on the playfulness of the two tools. It is shown how tools that engage in playful exploration sustain successful co-design sessions, while tools with a lower level of playfulness constrain such co-design sessions to an extent where more functional and less imaginative design concepts are produced.

Deconstructivist Design within HCI

Every HCI artefact reproduces a specific stance towards its users. Influential within the academic sphere is the notion of a User-Centered-Design process. However, observing actual design practice renders the assumption of the centrality of users problematic. To this end, the text conducts an exploration of the relationship between discourse within the fields of HCI and architecture. A special focus are the formal expressions of deconstructivism within architecture and their potential counterparts within HCI design.

Sensing Home: Participatory Exploration of Smart Sensors in the Home

More and more things in the home are sensor equipped and connected to an all encompassing Internet of Things (IoT). These »smart« things may offer novel ways to interact but also raise questions around their social implications. While participatory research on IoT for the smart city has shown that technically functioning IoT toolkits are valuable research tools, surprisingly few such toolkits exist for participatory research on the smart home. Thus, we have developed the toolkit »Sensing Home« to involve people into designing and understanding use and context of IoT in the home. We will report on the design, development, and subsequent field studies of Sensing Home. Three use cases will be presented, to discuss how Sensing Home enabled several modes of participatory exploration. The first use case reports on people developing custom sensor applications within their homes. The second use case describes how students appropriated Sensing Home for empirical in-the-wild studies of smart sensing in the home. For the third use case, Sensing Home was deployed in households to explore and to make sense of collected sensor data together with inhabitants.

Sensing Home: Designing an Open Tool That Lets People Collect and Interpret Simple Sensor Data from Their Homes

Abstract The Internet of Things in the home is a design space with huge potential. With sensors getting smaller and cheaper, smart sensor equipped objects will become an integral, preinstalled part of the future home. With this article we will reflect on Sensing Home, a design tool to explore sensors in the home together with people. Sensing Home allows people to integrate sensors and connectivity into mundane domestic products in order to make them smart. As such, it can be used by people to experience and explore sensors in the home and daily life. They may explore possible use cases, appropriate sensor technology, and learn about this technology through use. At the same time people may also be empowered to understand the issues and implications of sensors in the home. We present the design rationale of Sensing Home, five usage examples of how Sensing Home allowed people to explore sensor technology, and the deployment of Sensing Home together with a self-developed group discussion method to empower people to understand the benefits and pitfalls of sensors in their home. The article ends with a brief reflection whether Sensing Home is a probe or a toolkit.

Bricks, Blocks, Boxes, Cubes, and Dice: On the Role of Cubic Shapes for the Design of Tangible Interactive Devices

Cubic shapes play an astonishing role in the design of tangible interactive devices. Due to our curiosity for this widespread design preference lasting over thirty years, we constituted a literature survey of papers, books and products since the late 1970s. Out of a corpus of fourty-seven papers, books and products that propose cubic shapes for tangible interactive devices we trace the origins of cubicle tangibles and highlight the rationale for their application. Through a comparative study, we analyze the properties of this shape for tangible interaction design and classify these along the themes of: Manipulation as Input, Placement in Space as Input, Arrangement, Multifunctionality, Randomness, Togetherness & Variations, Physical Qualities, Container, and Pedestal for Output. We propose a taxonomy for cubic shaped tangible interactive devices based on the reviewed contributions, in order to support researchers and designers in their future work of designing cubic shaped tangible interactive devices.

Medienbezogene Lebenswelten mit Grounded Theory erforschen

Im abschliesenden Beitrag dieses Bandes wollen wir uns mit dem Status Quo des Verfahrens, insbesondere im deutschsprachigen Raum, auseinandersetzen. Dafur wahlen wir eine Form, die aus unserer Sicht dem Ansinnen der Reflexion entgegenkommt: Ein Gesprach zwischen Herausgebern des Bandes und Andreas M. Scheu, der sich an anderer Stelle mit der Adaption der Grounded Theory in der Kommunikationswissenschaft beschaftigt hat, aber an diesem Buch nicht direkt beteiligt ist. Dementsprechend soll in diesem Kapitel durchaus auch eine reflexive Distanz zum vorliegenden Band gewonnen und diskutiert werden, wie Grounded Theory im Feld der Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaft und in Untersuchungen medienbezogener Lebenswelten aufgenommen wurde.

Einleitung: Theoriegenerierendes empirisches Forschen in medienbezogenen Lebenswelten

Die Einleitung fuhrt sowohl in die Struktur des Bandes als auch in grundlegende Uberlegungen zur Anwendung von Grounded Theory fur das Erforschen medienbezogener Lebenswelten ein. In einer Voruberlegung wird das Buch als Sammlung zu adaptierender Anwendungen statt fertiger ‚Patentrezepte‘ vorgestellt, um gemas der Grounded Theory theoriegenerierend zu forschen. Grounded Theory kann dabei als Verfahrensrahmen, als Methode und/oder als Ergebnis begriffen und gebraucht werden. Insbesondere fur Einsteigerinnen und Einsteiger ist es nicht einfach, forschungspraktische, fur ihre Vorhaben und Materialien passende Darstellungen des Arbeitens mit Grounded Theory zu finden. Deshalb tragt der Band beispielhafte Anwendungen fur den Gegenstandsbereich medienbezogene Lebenswelten zusammen. Gemeint sind jene Felder der Alltagswelt, deren Sozialgeschehen grundlegend durch mediale Vermittlung und mediale Inhalte gepragt ist. Die Grounded Theory bietet sich gerade fur ihre Erforschung an, weil sie offen und gegenstandsbezogen klart, ob und inwiefern konkrete Medienbezuge in Lebenswelten hergestellt werden – anstatt deren Wirkmachtigkeit im Voraus festlegen zu wollen.