Lone Koefoed Hansen

Performing perception—staging aesthetics of interaction

In interaction design for experience-oriented uses of technology, a central facet of aesthetics of interaction is rooted in the users experience of herself “performing her perception.” By drawing on performance (theater) theory, phenomenology and sociology and with references to recent HCI-work on the relation between the system and the performer/user and the spectators relation to this dynamic, we show how the user is simultaneously operator, performer and spectator when interacting. By engaging with the system, she continuously acts out these three roles and her awareness of them is crucial in her experience. We argue that this 3-in-1 is always already shaping the users understanding and perception of her interaction as it is staged through her experience of the objects form and expression. Through examples ranging from everyday technologies utilizing performances of interaction to spatial contemporary artworks, digital as well as analogue, we address the notion of the performative spectator and the spectating performer. We demonstrate how perception is also performative and how focus on this aspect seems to be crucial when designing experience-oriented products, systems and services.

Embodied imagination : a hybrid method of designing for intimacy

Abstract Situated in the domain of research into mobile, wireless, networked and wearable computing, this exploratory paperintroduces the embodied imagination method and explains how it can contribute to the design process by creating an elastic space of performance that incorporates daily life and personal imagination into the design process. It is based on a study called Placebo Sleeves which was an experiential design phase of a larger project in wearable computing called whisper[s]. The innovation offered by this research is twofold: an integration of previously distinct methodologies, and an interdisciplinary theoretical framework relevant to the design of devices for affective, networked communication. The methodologies are shaped both by user experience models and by performance practices. We also articulate a domain of public dreaming, located at the conjunction of the private, public and secret within human existence, and suggest that shared use of mobile technologies has the potential to be situated there.

Understanding performative interactions in public settings

Interactive digital technologies pervade our shared spaces in personal, mobile, infrastructural and other embedded forms. These changes challenge the ways we understand and investigate the relationships between people, computing and settings. Responding to this situation—where ubiquitous computing is not only personal but also public, and where digital interactions may happen anywhere — this special issue explores how HCI research can use the strengths of an intersection of theory, practice and innovation in order to best address this conjunction of interactive technologies, public spaces and people interacting with or within both. With this shift to interaction happening in public spaces, people can no longer be seen as just ‘users’ but have to be understood as acting assemblages of bodies and technologies in the space they inhabit. This shift highlights the need to understand users in every setting—including those at desks and at work—as socially and culturally situated humans with agency. While this is not a new research development, this special issue speculates on and discusses how the shift to ‘everywhere interactions’ makes it important for research in human–computer interaction to reach beyond existing conventions. With this work comes a need to understand the interacting human as a situated body that is at any moment also a possible spectacle: as a body, a human and a user who engages with technology in response to the situation while also being a ‘performance’ for others to witness. Understanding people as actors in their context allows us to regard every user as a ‘performing body’ and a ‘performing subject’, and it enables us to analyse the performative aspects of interaction in many other situations than those where we design for actually staged performances in a defined performance space or stage. In this sense, ‘performative interaction’ is both concerned with technologies for on-stage performers using technologies as part of artistic expression, and an analytical frame for understanding every situation in which people engage with technologies (in public space). The question becomes: where and in which situations is this analytical frame relevant and useful?

Designing for performative interactions in public spaces

Building on the assumption that every human action in public space has a performative aspect, this workshop seeks to explore issues of mobile technology and interactions in public settings. We will examine the design of performative technologies, the evaluation of user experience, the importance of spectator and performer roles, and the social acceptability of performative actions in public spaces. The workshop will aim to bring together researchers and practitioners who are interested in the rapidly growing area of technologies supporting use in a public setting, and through this, explore the themes the workshop offers, plan for publications which synthesize together this disparate work, and finally to facilitate future collaborations between participants.

Hacking Women's Health

The aim of this two-day workshop is to bring together a nascent community of researchers to share research, ideas, methods and tools that can encourage, inspire and strengthen those of us working on digital womens health. Our workshop aims to take a pro-active stance, offering participants the opportunity to critique, design and hack existing and new womens digital health experiences. Or, in other words, to get their hands dirty. Through our hack-led event we aim to face head-on issues related to digital womens health, such as taboo, power and prejudice. This workshop will address current gaps in research and practice by enabling us to develop the confidence, networks and strategies that can facilitate researchers / designers / technologists to work within this space.

PeriodShare: A Bloody Design Fiction

In this paper we present PeriodShare, a speculative design proposing a wireless menstrual cup that automatically quantifies and shares menstrual data on social networks. We suggest that PeriodShare is a design fiction that uses both crowd-funding rhetoric and the form of a rather clumsy DIY project to create a particular fictional universe that (1) speculates on a potential near future of quantification of menstruation, and through this (2) encourages to reflection on the dynamics of contemporary technology paradigms like the politics and culture of self-tracking, sharing, and intimate data. As a research through design project and by using these communication threads, PeriodShare thus uses menstruation as a trope to investigate social, cultural and political issues of intimate technologies.

Evolutionary conservation of heavy chain protein transfer between glycosaminoglycans

The bikunin proteins are composed of heavy chains (HCs) covalently linked to a chondroitin sulfate chain originating from Ser-10 of bikunin. Tumor necrosis factor stimulated gene-6 protein (TSG-6)/heavy chain 2 (HC2) cleaves this unique cross-link and transfers the HCs to hyaluronan and other glycosaminoglycans via a covalent HC*TSG-6 intermediate. In the present study, we have investigated if this reaction is evolutionary conserved based on the hypothesis that it is of fundamental importance. The results revealed that plasma/serum samples from mammal, bird, and reptile were able to form TSG-6 complexes suggesting the presence of proteins with the same function as the human bikunin proteins. To substantiate this, the complex forming protein from Gallus gallus (Gg) plasma was purified and identified as a Gg homolog of human HC2*bikunin. In addition, Gg pre-alpha-inhibitor and smaller amount of high molecular weight forms composed of bikunin and two HCs were purified. Like the human bikunin proteins, the purified Gg proteins were all stabilized by a protein-glycosaminoglycan-protein cross-link, i.e. the HCs were covalently attached to a chondroitin sulfate originating from bikunin. Furthermore, the complex formed between Gg HC2*bikunin and human TSG-6 appeared to be identical to that of the human proteins. Akin to human, Gg HC2 was further transferred to hyaluronan when present, and when incubated in vitro, Gg pre-alpha-inhibitor and TSG-6, failed to form the intermediate covalent complex, essential for HC transfer. Significantly, Gg HC2, analogous to human HC2, promoted complex formation between human HC3 and human TSG-6, substantiating the evolutionary conservation of these interactions. The present study demonstrates that the unique interactions between bikunin proteins, glycosaminoglycans, and TSG-6 are evolutionary conserved, emphasizing the physiological importance of the TSG-6/HC2-mediated HC-transfer reaction. In addition, the data show that the evolution of HC transfer is likely to predate the role of HC.HA complexes in female fertility and thus has evolved in the context of inflammation rather than fertility.

Designing performative interactions in public spaces

More and more interactive artifacts are used in public on an everyday basis, and metaphors from performance and theatre studies find their way into research on these interfaces, addressing how interaction with technology can be understood in a performative sense. Through theoretical discussions as well as practical design activities and building on the assumption that every human action in public space has a performative aspect, this workshop seeks to explore performative interaction as it occurs in real world public settings with interactive technologies. The purpose of the workshop is to make prototyping experiments that enable participants to explore select themes and questions relevant to everyday or staged performativity, e.g. the design of performative technologies, the evaluation of user experience, the importance of spectator and performer roles, and the social acceptability of performative actions in public spaces.

Contemplative interaction: alternating between immersion and reflection

Understanding the relationship between user and artefact in interfaces moving beyond transparency and into experience provision, is becoming an important area within HCI. The user-artefact relationship is central to aesthetics dealing with contemplation, a term describing how the artwork makes the user alternate between reflection and immersion. By analysing two interactive artefacts, an artwork and a design proposal, this paper investigates how contemplation appears in and can be transferred to interactive artefacts aimed at providing seductive, fun and interesting experiences.

Rethinking information handling: designing for information offload

This paper introduces information offload as a supplement way of responding to and designing for information. By presenting iFlush, a design concept aiming at providing the user with a possibility to offload information and then instantly dispose of it, the paper presents an approach towards designing for reflection and also serves as a critique towards information overload. Furthermore, the absence of reflection on the role played by HCI community in the constant augmenting of all spaces is addressed.