Arne Berger

Produce. annotate. archive. repurpose --: accelerating the composition and metadata accumulation of tv content

Supporting most aspects of a media providers real workflows such as production, distribution, content description, archiving, and re-use of video items, we developed a holistic framework to solve issues such as lack of human resources, necessity of parallel media distribution, and retrieving previously archived content through editors or consumers.

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.

Conduplicated Symmetries: Renegotiating the Material Basis of Prototype Research

The role of materiality within prototyping recently received a high degree of attention from HCI and design communities. Existing approaches have solely focussed on the materiality of artifacts produced during prototyping. This focus largely has left the materiality of designers and users unaccounted for. The text illustrates how the Somatic-Marker-Hypothesis and Actor-Network-Theory can be employed in order to illustrate these forgotten dimensions of materiality during prototyping: Not only is material shaped during construction of artefacts. Material modifications also comprise alterations within the material of designers’ and users’ bodies themselves. In order to facilitate these descriptions, a novel approach towards symmetry had to be developed.

Towards a Vocabulary of Prototypes in Interaction Design – A Criticism of Current Practice

A methodological framework and a constructivist meta theory for formulating a vocabulary of prototype characteristics in interaction design are presented. Motivation for this research approach is drawn from cognitive psychology which hypothesizes that the aesthetic cognition of artifacts lies outside the scope of verbal appreciation. First, the shortcomings of the related design research literature are discussed in an attempt to frame a suitable methodology for overcoming these issues. It is also shown how the analysis of existing literature, protocols and observations will fit into this research scheme. Second, an accompanying meta theory building on Latours [15, 16] account of artifact–subject relations within the actor network theory, is described.

Moody mobile TV: adding emotion to personalized playlists

An interface for filtering large video repositories for generating personalized playlists via navigation and selection of moods and emotion on a mobile device.

Understanding the Informal Support Networks of Older Adults in India

We proposes a field trip to understand how older adults in India construct and maintain informal support networks. The aim of the study is to get a nuanced view on older adults’ practices of receiving from and providing support to peers, family, friends, and neighbors. Group discussions and collaborative photography will be applied to investigate. Findings will be interpreted to understand implications for how to design for support.

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.

Study-Town: a Game for Cultural Awareness

Games are a convenient method of preparing foreign exchange students for the challenges they are going to encounter living in a foreign country. In this paper, we describe the background, concept, and usage of a game called Study-Town created for the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD. The game prepares the foreign exchange students coming to Germany for typical German peculiarities.

Visual String of Reformulation

An interface for query reformulation based on multimedial search widgets is proposed. It allows the co-existence of widgets for unambiguous intellectual metadata and vague, automatically annotated metadata.