Shannon Cuykendall

Strategies for Embodied Design: The Value and Challenges of Observing Movement

In this paper, we investigate the value and challenges of observing movement experience in embodied design. We interviewed three design researchers selected from a CHI2014 panel on designing for the experiential body. For each designer, we analyzed a publication describing their process of observing movement experience. By analyzing the interviews and publications, we studied how these researchers observe movement and how they articulate it in their design process. From our study, we contribute a set of techniques for performing movement observation inspired by somatics and body-based practices which we define as: attunement, attention, and kinesthetic empathy. We illustrate how these techniques have been applied by the selected researchers, and also highlight the remaining challenges related to articulating, translating, and sharing the felt movement experience in the context of design within HCI. Finally, we address these challenges by arguing for further exploration of movement frameworks from the fields of somatics, body-based practices, and movement studies as specific strategies that can be applied to HCI.

Simply Spinning: Extending Current Design Frameworks for Kinesthetic Empathy

We describe design considerations in Serpentine Dance, Refocused (SDR), an interactive movement installation that pays homage to Loïe Fullers mesmerizing creations of light and motion. Our design goals were inspired by kinesthetic empathy research. Fuller created the Serpentine Dance (1891) at a time when many artists turned to abstraction as a way for audiences to engage with the essence of motion rather than narrative plots. We sought to heighten the feeling of kinesthetic empathy through creating an interactive environment where audience members could physically engage and reflect on the sensation of spinning, a prominent action in the Serpentine Dance. Through our analysis of SDR we found that our design intentions relating to kinesthetic empathy were not addressed by current design frameworks for kinesthetic interactions. Based on kinesthetic empathy research, we restructure and extend these frameworks into an evaluative and generative framework for interactive systems. We propose that kinesthetic empathy is the center of all movement interactions. This broader definition of kinesthetic empathy can be used to evaluate and generate a wide variety of movement interactions. We discuss the design of SDR through the lens of our evaluative framework.

How do experts observe movement

Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) is an expert-based method by which Certified Movement Analysts observe and analyze movement. LMA is increasingly used in a variety of research fields, particularly when studying movement expressivity and computation where it is essential to generate an understanding of the observation process. In this paper we articulate the application of LMA as a tool for movement analysis in HCI research by using qualitative methods to deconstruct the observation process of LMA experts. We conducted a focus group in which 12 expert-participants observed and annotated videos of movement according to LMA categories. We transcribed their observation process and analyzed it using grounded theory in order to extract categories, concepts and theories that best explain and describe the process of observation in LMA. By doing so, we open research perspectives in which LMA can be integrated as a method for observation in the design of movement-based computational systems.

POEME: A Poetry Engine Powered by Your Movement

The interactive movement installation, POEME: A Poetry Engine explores the relationship between bodily, mechanical and digital interpretations of movement. The installation grew out of our design of POEME, a mobile website that responds to movement with poetic verse. While the POEME website can be used virtually anywhere, the installation anchors the interaction to a tangible space. We reference the choreographed routines of mass transit by giving participants a virtual ticket which grants them entrance to a private performance space. The participants movement is conveyed outside of the space in the form of measurements and poetic verse created from words that relate to mechanical theories of movement. In order to understand the relationship between these interpretations and the bodily movement that powers POEME, the audience must experience the interaction for themselves. POEME builds off prior work in body-centric, experiential design. In contrast to systems that seek to identify individual features of movement, we instead attempt to characterize and respond to whole kinesthetic experiences through poetic verse.

Hearing movement: how taiko can inform automatic recognition of expressive movement qualities

We describe the first stages of exploratory research undertaken to analyze expressive movement qualities of taiko performance, a Japaense artistic practice that combines stylized movement with drumming technique. The eventual goals of this research are to answer 1) Can expressive visual qualities of taiko be heard in the sound and 2) Can expressive sonic qualities of taiko be seen in the movement? We achieved high accuracy across multiple machine-learning algorithms in recognizing key sonic and visual qualities of taiko performance. In contrast to many current methods of studying expressive qualities of movement, we inform our data collection process and annotations with taiko technique. We seek to understand how the fundamentals of taiko create expression. More broadly, we suggest that codified artistic practices, like taiko, can inform automatic recognition and generation of expressive movement qualities that have been challenging to reliably classify, parse, and detect. In future work we propose ways to generalize expressive features of taiko so they can be recognized in other movement contexts.

If Words Could Dance: Moving from Body to Data through Kinesthetic Evaluation

The value of integrating the body and experience into technology has become an important goal in third wave HCI. One challenge in using experiential design methodologies is understanding how to transmit and apply the fullness of an experience into a computational system. We explore the relationship and meaning that can be created between kinesthetic experiences, words, and sensor data through the design of an interactive system that generates poetry from movement data. POEME (Portrayal of Ephemeral Movement Experiences) combines words into insightful, whimsical, and witty poetry that interprets ones movement. We refined our design of POEME through kinesthetically evaluating sensor data with the aid of visual analytic tools and confirmed the utility of these results through incorporating them into an effective machine learning system. Through this combination of visual analytics and kinesthetic evaluation, we contribute to the exploration of innovative design practices that both embody and evaluate movement interaction design strategies.