Annika Waern

Embodied Sketching

Designing bodily experiences is challenging. In this paper, we propose embodied sketching as a way of practicing design that involves understanding and designing for bodily experiences early in the design process. Embodied sketching encompasses ideation methods that are grounded in, and inspired by, the lived experience and includes the social and spatial settings as design resources in the sketching. Embodied sketching is also based on harnessing play and playfulness as the principal way to elicit creative physical engagement. We present three different ways to implement and use embodied sketching in the application domain of co-located social play. These include bodystorming of ideas, co-designing with users, and sensitizing designers. The latter helps to uncover and articulate significant, as well as novel embodied experiences, whilst the first two are useful for developing a better understanding of possible design resources.

Framing IxD knowledge

Interaction design (IxD) research cuts through many domains of HCI yet remains distinctive. There are convincing arguments that Research through Design (RtD) is a valid research method in the conce ...

The Ethics of Unaware Participation in Public Interventions

Interaction design is increasingly merging with designing our everyday environment. Trialing and evaluating such designs in an ecologically valid way often requires that they be installed in public space without clearly communicating their nature as trials. This leads to unaware participation in what, in fact, is an experimental intervention. This article focuses on the ethical considerations that arise from doing, and studying, interventions in public space, including but not restricted to interactive installations. It argues that under certain circumstances, such as when the known risks are low and the intervention presents sufficient support for avoiding involvement, active participation can be considered implicit consent. We revisit some example interventions from literature and press to scrutinize the potential risks and pitfalls associated to unaware participation.

Playification: The PhySeEar case

The concept of playification has recently been proposed as an extension of, or alternative to, gamification. We present a playification design project targeting the re-design of physiotherapy rehabilitative sessions for elderly inpatients. The menial and repetitive nature of the physical exercises targeted for design might seem ideal for shallow widespread gamification approaches that add external rewards to entice usage. In the PhySeEar project, we introduced a third agent instead, in the form of technology that would take over some of the work typically carried out by the physiotherapist. This technological intervention triggered the emergence of playfulness, when inpatients and the therapist re-signified the ongoing activity by engaging in playful role-taking, such as blaming the technology for mistakes, or for sensitivity to the inpatients inaccurate movements. Based on the experiences from this project, we discuss some of the major differences between playification and gamification

Designing for Children's Outdoor Play

Childrens outdoor play is fluent and fluctuating, shaped by environmental features and conditions. The article reports on a project where interaction designers and landscape architects work together to fuse their knowledge into working solutions for integrating interactive play in outdoor environments. We report on a schoolyard trial, where interactive play technology was installed as an integral part of a schoolyard environment, and discuss the interplay between technology and the environment that was partly natural forest and partly constructed playground. We highlight in particular the importance of the adaptability of the natural environment, how the combination of interactive technology and natural environment can contribute to the versatility of play activities, and how the interactive technology can both be useful for presenting invitations to play in such adaptable places, and enhance the adaptability for play in otherwise impoverished places.

Activity as the Ultimate Particular of Interaction Design

In the turn towards practice-oriented research in interaction design, one of the most important proposals has been the emphasis on the ultimate particulars produced by design, as embodiments of design knowledge. In current HCI research, those particulars are almost always taken to be things artefacts or singular systems. We argue that this emphasis may have come at a cost that can be described as a loss of identity; interaction design research was never primarily concerned with the design of artefacts, but with how humans act and interact with each other with and through artefacts. We propose a complementary perspective by looking at design projects and traditions where the ultimate particulars can be considered to be activities rather than things. The article is concerned with how knowledge needs to be articulated in the scholarly engagement with such design practices. We argue that engagement with activity-centric design gets design research one step closer towards understanding salient contemporary design practices and what Buchanan calls environmental design.

Designing for Transformative Play

Numerous studies have foregrounded how play is only partially shaped by the artifacts that their designers design. The play activity can change the structures framing it, turning players into co-designers through the mere act of playing. This article contributes to our understanding of how we can design for play taking into account that play has this transformative power. We describe four ways that players can engage with framing structures, which we classify in terms of whether players conform to explore, transgress, or (re)create them. Through the examples of three case studies, we illustrate how this model has been useful in design: as an analytical tool for deconstructing player behavior, to articulate design goals and support specific design choices, and for shaping the design process.

Embarrassing Interactions

Wherever the rapid evolution of interactive technologies disrupts standing situational norms, creates new, often unclear situational audiences, or crosses cultural boundaries, embarrassment is likely. This makes embarrassment a fundamental adoption and engagement hurdle, but also a creative design space for human-computer interaction. However, research on embarrassment in HCI has remained scattered and unsystematic so far. This workshop therefore convenes researchers and practitioners to assemble and advance the current state of research on embarrassing interactions.

Design, appropriation, and use of technology in larps

During the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in supporting social play through the design of collocated digital games, alongside efforts to better understand social-physical modes of play. In this paper, we present relevant insights from a well-established gaming community, the larp (Live Action Role Play) community. This community has a longstanding tradition of making use of costumes, physical environments, and objects to shape player experience. We conducted a survey completed by 39 larpers concerning how they use digital technology in larp, and the way technology is designed and appropriated to augment the larp experience. Here, we present early results in the form of a preliminary taxonomy of technologies in larps, as well as key trends for design, use, and appropriation of technology to impact in-game social and emotional experience.

Gaming in the crucible of science: gamifying the science center visit

Gamification can be done for many purposes. We describe an experiment with gamification that, while addressing an informal learning environment, was not done to directly support learning. In the design of an overarching game experience for a science center, the goals were to support a focused visit, and create incitement for families to engage together. We describe how the science center environment poses multiple challenges for game and interaction design, which differ from ordinary gamification projects. We explain how these were addressed by designing for group interactivity, supporting both open and challenge-based play, and a careful combination of physical and digital interaction.