Asreen Rostami

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.

Bio-Sensed and Embodied Participation in Interactive Performance

Designing for interactive performances is challenging both in terms of technology design, and of understanding the interplay between technology, narration, and audience interactions. Bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies afford new ways for artists to engage with audiences, and for audiences to become part of the artwork. Their deployment raises a number of issues for designers of interactive performances. This paper explores such issues by presenting five design ideas for interactive performance afforded by bio-sensing and bodily tracking (i.e. Microsoft Kinect) developed during two design workshops. We use these ideas, and the related scenarios to discuss three emerging issues namely: temporality of input, autonomy and control, and visibility of input in relation to the deployment of bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies in the context of interactive performances.

Glimpses of the future: designing fictions for mixed-reality performances

Mixed Reality Performances straddle technological and performative innovation, providing a site for collaboration between artists, performers, HCI scholars and designers. While interdisciplinarity provides opportunities for innovation, it also poses challenges for the underlying creative processes and their outcomes. To explore the role Design Fiction can play in addressing these challenges we organized a workshop at CHI 2017 [1], to use Design Fiction to generate visions of future Mixed Reality Performances (MRP).

Testing in the Field: Voice Based Interaction for Citizen Reporting in Uganda

In developing countries where Internet is not readily accessible and literacy sometimes low, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems have been shown to provide opportunities in a variety of civic activities. In this way, such systems can give the opportunity to more easily influence and participate in public affairs. However the lack of an efficient system of administration can delay delivering the collected reports to the relevant organizations or authorities. This paper presents a study of a citizen reporting system that was developed, implemented and tested in Uganda. This was done in collaboration with the Women of Uganda Network an organization to empower women using ICT. We studied an IVR system called U-Call that allows administrators to easily publish and tag audio reports over the Web (reported by citizen) using low generation mobile devices. We highlight a number of issues, including multiple authentication process that needs to be taken into account for future development. We emphasize the importance of field studies in understanding and designing for this user group and understanding the reality of the technical infrastructure available.

Understanding Modern Audience in Traditional Settings

While audience members of theatre productions are generally discouraged from using their mobile devices, as mobile technology is interwoven into our daily lives use in theatres still goes on. Some of this use is encouraged by the artists and built into the performance, however the furtive use by audience members during non-interactive performances has not been studied. In this poster we report on our work-in-progress consisting of preliminary analysis of in-situ observation and video analysis of four out of seven performances currently recorded to understand when and how mobile devices are used. This analysis is supported by interviews of selected audience members to better understand why and for what purpose these devices are used in this setting. These preliminary results draw attention to the correlations between (i) the audience’s distance from the stage, (ii) the engagement of the current scene, and (iii) the audience’s personal connection to the art work or the performers, and frequency of mobile phone use.