Petra Sundström

In situ informants exploring an emotional mobile messaging system in their everyday practice

We have designed and built a mobile emotional messaging system named eMoto. With it, users can compose messages through using emotion-signalling gestures as input, rendering a message background of colours, shapes and animations expressing the emotional content. The design intent behind eMoto was that it should be engaging physically, intellectually and socially, and allow users to express themselves emotionally in all those dimensions, involving them in an affective loop experience. In here, we describe the user-centred design process that lead to the eMoto system, but focus mainly on the final study where we let five friends use eMoto for two weeks. The study method, which we name in situ informants, helped us enter and explore the subjective and distributed experiences of use, as well as how emotional communication unfolds in everyday practice when channelled through a system like eMoto. The in situ informants are on the one hand users of eMoto, but also spectators, that are close friends who observe and document user behaviour. Design conclusions include the need to support the sometimes fragile communication rhythm that friendships require-expressing memories of the past, sharing the present and planning for the future. We saw that emotions are not singular state that exist within one person alone, but permeates the total situation, changing and drifting as a process between the two friends communicating. We also gained insights into the under-estimated but still important physical, sensual aspects of emotional communication. Experiences of the in situ informants method pointed to the need to involve participants in the interpretation of the data obtained, as well as establishing a closer connection with the spectators.

Interactional empowerment

We propose that an interactional perspective on how emotion is constructed, shared and experienced, may be a good basis for designing affective interactional systems that do not infringe on privacy or autonomy, but instead empowers users. An interactional design perspective may make use of design elements such as open-ended, ambiguous, yet familiar, interaction surfaces that users can use as a basis to make sense of their own emotions and their communication with one-another. We describe the interactional view on design for emotional communication, and provide a set of orienting design concepts and methods for design and evaluation that help translate the interactional view into viable applications. From an embodied interaction theory perspective, we argue for a non-dualistic, non-reductionist view on affective interaction design.

Inspirational bits: towards a shared understanding of the digital material

In any design process, a mediums properties need to be considered. This is nothing new in design. Still we find that in HCI and interactive systems design the properties of a technology are often glossed over. That is, technologies are black-boxed without much thought given to how their distinctive properties open up design possibilities. In this paper we describe what we call inspirational bits as a way to become more familiar with the design material in HCI, the digital material. We describe inspirational bits as quick and dirty but fully working systems in both hardware and software built with the aim of exposing one or several of the dynamic properties of a digital material. We also show how they provide a means of sharing design knowledge across the members of a multi-disciplined design team.

The material move how materials matter in interaction design research

The topic of Materials has recently surfaced as a major theme within the research field of interaction design. In this paper we further discuss the need for in-depth descriptions of specific design cases, by revisiting some of our own research-through-design efforts when working with new or not yet fully explored materials for mobile interaction. We outline a series of design challenges that we see commonly arising in this domain, divided into three general themes; 1) affordances of hardware and casings, 2) experiential properties of different software solution, and 3) material properties of sensors, radio-signals, and electricity. Our main conclusion is that research in interaction design needs an extended focus on how systems are crafted from and together with properties of digital materials, and how new knowledge gained from those processes can be shared.

Materiality matters---experience materials

conceptualize the inseparability of digital materials, user experiences, and the social context. Aiming to address the current theoretical discourse in HCI focused on conceptualizing material integrations under the notion of materiality, we realized our panel session was quite timely. In browsing the technical program of last year’s CHI conference, we noticed that it contained at least three full papers on materials and materiality, one best paper, one alt.chi talk, two Doctoral Consortium papers, two posters, one interactivity presentation, one video presentation, and one complete paper session explicitly focused on materiality as a way to conceptualize these issues. We sought to contribute to this vibrant stream of research in our field.

Come drive with me: an ethnographic study of driver-passenger pairs to inform future in-car assistance

There is today a large number of ADAS used while driving. These systems are mainly technology driven and most often fail to make use of the social nature and the collaborative mechanisms between driver-passenger pairs. To inform the development of future automotive user interface designs we need to develop a deeper understanding of collaboration in general. In addition, we need to develop an understanding of how, and in what way, other platforms (e.g., the mobile phones) are and will be used in combination with these systems while driving. This paper presents the results of a participative ethnographic study with nine driver-passenger pairs recruited from two online car-sharing portals. Results are categorized in three areas: common ground as a base for successful in-car communication, types and strategies of front-seat passenger assistance, and lastly the impact of technology on collaboration.

Immaterial materials: designing with radio

Designing with digital materials is sometimes challenging due to material properties that are for all practical purposes invisible. Here we present our work on exploring one such material, radio, and how we have worked with making radio a more tangible and accessible design material for multidisciplinary design teams to work with. Starting from an account of a previous project of ours, the LEGA project, we describe a design situation involving radio that exemplifies some of the challenges that working with radio can involve. We thereafter describe how we have used the Inspirational Bits approach to further investigate the peculiarities of radio as an immaterial design material and what possibilities it holds for interactive systems design.

Gaming to sit safe: the restricted body as an integral part of gameplay

This paper presents a design exploration of full-body interaction games played in cars. It describes how we have designed, implemented, and evaluated the core experiences of three different games, which were all aimed at making sitting properly more fun for players/children while travelling by car. By making the restricted body an integral part of gameplay, we hope to, as a side product of gameplay, bring about the best and also most safe body posture for young players/children travelling by car, i.e., sitting reasonably upright and still in their child seat with their head leaning back on the neck rest. Another outcome of this could also be an overall safer situation in the car, in that children not sitting still in their child seats while being driven might be stressful for the driver. By presenting the details of our design efforts in this particular design context, we hope to add also to the knowledge we, in HCI, have for how to design bodily experiences with technology at large.

Experiential artifacts as a design method for somaesthetic service development

How can deep understandings of material properties, limitations and possibilities be used concretely as a resource in the design of embodied experiences? How can material explorations spur and potentially direct, inspire, open up for new technologies and innovations? How can we identify, develop, and polish desirable core mechanics for embodied experiences and what kind of mobile services can be built with these experiences? In this position paper we describe our idea of experiential artifacts, and how we think these can help us open up the design space of the next generation of physically engaging mobile technologies.

A user-centered approach to affective interaction

We have built eMoto, a mobile service for sending and receiving affective messages, with the explicit aim of addressing the inner experience of emotions. eMoto is a designed artifact that carries emotional experiences only achieved through interaction. Following on the theories of embodiment, we argue emotional experiences can not be design in only design for. eMoto is the result of a user-centered design approach, realized through a set of initial brainstorming methods, a persona, a Laban-analysis of body language and a two-tiered evaluation method. eMoto is not a system that could have been designed from theory only, but require an iterative engagement with end-users, however, in combination with theoretical work. More specifically, we will show how we have managed to design an ambiguous and open system that allows for users’ emotional engagement.