Laurens Boer

Material Programming: A New Interaction Design Practice

We propose the notion of material programming as a new practice for designing future interactive artifacts. Material programming would be a way for the interaction designer to better explore the dynamics of the materials at hand and through that familiarity be able to compose more sophisticated and complex temporal forms in their designs. As such it would blur the boundaries between programming and crafting these new smart and computational materials. We envision a material programming practice developed around physical tools (e.g. Fig 1) that draw on bodily skills and experiences (Fig 2) while enabling actions performed directly on the material with immediate effects (no program vs. execution mode). Finally, the tools would enable one layer of abstraction and as such encompass the potential of the computational materials but not that of possibly adjacent computers, which could run more complex algorithms.

A development support bubble for children

In this paper we describe an opportunity that Ambient Intelligence provides outside the domains typically associated with it. We present a concept for enhancing child development by introducing tangible computing in a way that fits the children and improves current education. We argue that the interfaces used should be simple and make sense to the children. The computer should be hidden and interaction should take place through familiar play objects to which the children already have a connection. Contrary to a straightforward application of personal computers, our solution addresses cognitive, social and fine motor skills in an integrated manner. We illustrate our vision with a concrete example of an application that supports the inevitable transition from free play throughout the classroom to focused play at the desk. We also present the validation of the concept with children, parents and teachers, highlighting that they all recognize the benefits of tangible computing in this domain.

Materialities influencing the design process

The use of material artefacts within the design process is a long-standing and continuing characteristic of interaction design. Established methods, such as prototyping, which have been widely adopted by educators and practitioners, are seeing renewed research interest and being reconsidered in light of the evolving needs of the field. Alongside this, the past decade has seen the introduction and adoption of a diverse range of novel design methods into interaction design, such as cultural probes, technology probes, context mapping, and provotypes. Yet, interaction design does not have a cohesive framework for understanding this diverse range of practices. Such a framework would assist practitioners in comparing and choosing between methods across the different stages, contexts and stakeholder relations within a design process. It seems that one fruitful place to start in addressing this lack is to focus in on the common characteristic that these practices share of materialities influencing the design process.

The Hedonic Haptics Player: A Wearable Device to Experience Vibrotactile Compositions

The Hedonic Haptics player is a portable wearable device that plays back vibrotactile compositions. It consists of three domes each of which houses a vibration motor providing vibrotactile sensations to the wearer. The domes are connected to a control unit the size of a small Walkman. The Hedonic Haptics player can store up to ten different compositions made up of haptic signals varying in amplitude, waveform and length. We use these different compositions to explore the aesthetic potential of vibrational haptics in an embodied wearable setup.

Giving Form to a Hedonic Haptics Player

In this pictorial we present the form-giving process of a Hedonic Haptic player, a wearable device that plays vibrotactile patterns on the body. We depict how we explored the aesthetics of the vibrotactile design space, how we constructed a platform as body of a hedonic experience, and how we developed different vibrotactile compositions. These activities collectively show how combinations of experiencing form, composing form, and materializing form can contribute to the aesthetic form-giving practice in interaction design.

Material programming

3 6 I N T E R A C T I O N S M AY–J U N E 2 017 In the near future, smart materials will have computational power embedded in the form of graphene transistors or nanotubes [1]. These will be the ultimate computational composites: materials that hold classic material qualities, such as structural durability, flexibility, texture, weight, and color, but that are also capable of sensing, actuating, and computing [2]. Indeed, computers will not be things in and of themselves, but rather will be embedded into the materials that make up our surroundings. This also means that the way we interact with computers, and the way we program them, will change. Consequently, we ask what the practice of programming and giving form to such materials would be like. How would we be able to familiarize ourselves with the dynamics of these materials and their different combinations of cause and effect? Which tools would we need, and what would they look like? Would we program these computational composites through external computers and then transfer the code to them, or would the programming happen closer to the materials? In this article, we outline a new research program that floats between imagined futures and the development of a material programming practice [1].

Material Programming: a Design Practice for Computational Composites

In this paper we propose the notion of material programming as a future design practice for computational composites. Material programming would be a way for the interaction designer to better explore the dynamic potential of computational materials at hand and through that familiarity be able to compose more sophisticated and complex temporal forms in their designs. The contribution of the paper is an analysis of qualities that we find a material programming practice would and should support: designs grounded in material properties and experiences, embodied programming practice, real-time on-site explorations, and finally a reasonable level of complexity in couplings between input and output. We propose material programming knowing that the technology and materials are not entirely ready to support this practice yet, however, we are certain they will be and that the interaction design community will need to find new ways of relating to such computational materials.

Playful interactive mirroring to support bonding between parents and children with Down Syndrome

This paper presents the ongoing design research and preliminary results in the field of family-centered healthcare, in particular directed to families with children at the age of 0-2 years with Down Syndrome. A central concern of these families is parent-child bonding, as bonding is often disrupted due to a lack of feedback from infants. We designed for parent-child bonding following a multi-stakeholder inquiry, in our case a family, a developmental and child psychologist, a physiotherapist specialized in child-care, and a family therapist. Based on an inquiry we argue that parent-child bonding can be supported through playful interactive mirroring. We designed a prototype to promote mirroring through multimodal stimuli, such as light and sound. As a first evaluated prototype resulted in enthusiasm and a sense of pride for the parents, we propose further explorations on the notion of playful interactive mirroring and future studies with the designed platform.

The toilet companion: a toilet brush that should be there for you and not for others

In this article we present the Toilet Companion: an augmented toilet brush that aims to provide moments of joy in the toilet room, and if necessary, stimulates toilet goers to use the brush. Based upon the amount of time a user sits upon the toilet seat, the brush swings it handle with increasing speed: initially to draw attention to its presence, but over time to give a playful impression. Hereafter, the entire brush makes rapid up and downward movements to persuade the user to pick it up. In use, it generates beeps in response to human handling, to provide a sense of reward and accompanying pleasure. Despite our aims in providing joy and stimulation, participants from field trials with the Toilet Companion reported experiencing the brush as undesirable, predominantly because the sounds produced by the brush would make private toilet room activities publicly perceivable. The design intervention thus challenged the social boundaries of the otherwise private context of the toilet room, opening up an interesting area for design-ethnographic research about perception of space, where interactive artifacts can be mobilized to deliberately breach public, social, personal, and intimate spaces.

Reconfiguring the Appearance and Expression of Social Robots by Acknowledging their Otherness

The design of social robots usually does not focus on their kinetic expression, and often follows the assumption that their appearance should be human or animal like. To encourage a broader understanding of the possibilities for design of social robots, and as an inquiry into alternative relations with them, we present two robots, the Lat-Sac and the Blo-Nut, which are purposefully moving away from typical social robot design. We present how we engaged performance experts in the choreographic sketching of their elastic expression, and how we staged the robots in a fictitious near-future scenario to create a discursive space for reflection on emerging relations. Based on these encounters we discuss how acknowledging the otherness of social robots can be valuable in designing as well as growing intriguing relations with them.