Jocelyn Spence

Performative experience design

This paper categorises key HCI literature that engages with performance theory or practice according to a taxonomy that puts the user at the centre of the analysis. This taxonomy reveals three strands of research that use performance to address HCI and interaction design at the most fundamental level. We use these strands of research to map out what we have identified as the emerging field of Performative Experience Design. This field, which lies between HCI and performance studies, presents an extraordinarily rich potential for the design of interactive systems.

Performative experience design: where autobiographical performance and human–computer interaction meet

Abstract This contribution identifies theories and practices specific to performance art for the purpose of describing a potentially fruitful area of exchange between non-representational performance and human–computer interaction (HCI). We identify three strands of current HCI research that are already working in this area of overlap, which we have termed ‘performative experience design’. We then single out one of these strands, digitally augmented autobiographical performance, for further examination. Digitally augmented autobiographical performance draws on both autobiographical performance, which we see as rooted in performance and performance art, and media sharing, a field of research within HCI. Drawing on our experiences of designing a digital system for autobiographical performance, we offer a series of proposals for HCI research and applications of performative experience design.

Curating the digital: spaces for art and interaction

This workshop intends to use the key strength of the CHI Community; research linked to practice, to design an Art Catalog for CHI. The workshop will start with an examination of current research in curating interactive art. The outcomes of the first phase of the workshop will then feed into Design Charrette exercises that will involve prototyping an Art Catalog and developing ideas for presenting a future Art Gallery event as part of the CHI conference. The results from the workshop will then form the basis of an agenda of a Spotlight SIG meeting where we will discuss the nature of the CHI Art Catalog. Workshop outcomes will also be disseminated to a wider audience.

Throwaway Citation of Prior Work Creates Risk of Bad HCI Research

In CHI papers, citation of previous work is typically a shallow, throwaway action that demonstrates little critical engagement with the work cited. We present a citation context analysis of over 3000 citations from 69 papers at CHI2016, which demonstrates that only 4.8% of papers cited are presented as anything other than uncontested fact. In 43% of CHI papers sampled, we found no evidence of any critical engagement. Lack of discussion and critique of previous work can encourage the spread of misunderstandings and errors. Authors, reviewers and publication venues must all change practices to respond to this failure of scholarship.

The Rough Mile: Testing a Framework of Immersive Practice

We present our case study on gifting digital music, The Rough Mile, as an example of a Framework of Immersive Practice, intended for researchers and practitioners in HCI and interaction design. Although immersion is a frequently used term in the HCI and related literatures, we find no definitions or frameworks that are robust enough to capture the full range of multi-sensory, emotional, and cognitive engagement that the richest of these experiences can entail. We therefore turn to the theatrical performance literature to distil a theory-based framework of practices that can apply to interdisciplinary projects as well as works with an entirely aesthetic aim. The design choices and findings of The Rough Mile are presented in terms of this framework, leading to a discussion of the design guidelines that can shape its use in any HCI or interaction design project aiming for a deep, personal engagement through technology.

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).

Performing Digital Media Design

This workshop explores a novel design practice and the methodology behind it in an entirely hands-on way. Participants will create a performance centring on their own personal digital media using Collect Yourselves! -- a two-phase online system that guides the selection, sharing, and live performance of digital photos. Through using the system and briefly analysing the results, participants will gain first-hand understanding of the potential for using performance to extend interactions with technology into an emotionally and aesthetically charged space. The workshop will then cover the basics of the methodology used to create this system, leading to a brainstorming session for how to use Performative Experience Design to interrogate and enhance each participants own research interests. Participants in this workshop will create and experience a compelling and potentially transformative engagement with digital technology, then use this experience and the methodology behind it to pursue the unique aesthetics of performance in their own work.

Performance and critical design

Critical design is a powerful methodology for HCI research that contributes to personal benefit and social renewal. We propose performance studies as a way of implementing and extending critical design.

The Rough Mile: Reframing Location Through Locative Audio

We chart the design and deployment of The Rough Mile: a multi-layered locative audio walk that blends pre-recorded spoken word, original music, and ambient environmental sound with real-time external ambient sound by employing bone conduction headphones. The design of the walking experience -- set in a city centre streets -- deliberately sought to explore novel mechanisms to create thematic and functional relationships between the layers of audio and attributes of the built environment, with the intention of constructing an augmented environment where the sounds of real and fictional are blurred. Twenty-six participants completed the walk describing an absorbing and well paced experience that encouraged them to view the location with an altered perspective, one that pulled aspects of the built environment and its population into the fictional story. We distil the findings and present a set of implications for the design of such locative walking experiences.

Collect Yourselves! : Risk, Intimacy, and Dissonance in Intermedial Performance

Collect Yourselves! is a technologically mediated system that opens up the transformational possibilities of performance to small groups of non-professionals sharing their own digital photos and the stories behind them. Remarkably, their performances achieve moments of emotional and aesthetic power, but these require the performers to take risks, make themselves vulnerable, and establish connections with their audiences. We discuss the framework and methodology of our interdisciplinary approach to designing these performances (Performative Experience Design), then contextualise our discussion within recent work on the subjective experience of risk in the performance literature, from both the performer’s point of view and the audience’s. Our experiences with Collect Yourselves! argue for risk as a necessary component for rewarding and potentially transformational experiences of intermedial autobiographical performance.