Tensions of Data-Driven Reflection: A Case Study of Real-Time Emotional Biosensing

Biosensing displays, increasingly enrolled in emotional reflection, promise authoritative insight by presenting users’ emotions as discrete categories. Rather than machines interpreting emotions, we sought to explore an alternative with emotional biosensing displays in which users formed their own interpretations and felt comfortable critiquing the display. So, we designed, implemented, and deployed, as a technology probe, an emotional biosensory display: Ripple is a shirt whose pattern changes color responding to the wearer’s skin conductance, which is associated with excitement. 17 participants wore Ripple over 2 days of daily life. While some participants appreciated the ‘physical connection’ Ripple provided between body and emotion, for others Ripple fostered insecurities about ‘how much’ feeling they had. Despite our design intentions, we found participants rarely questioned the display’s relation to their feelings. Using biopolitics to speculate on Ripple’s surprising authority, we highlight ethical stakes of biosensory representations for sense of self and ways of feeling

Orecchio: Extending Body-Language through Actuated Static and Dynamic Auricular Postures

In this paper, we propose using the auricle – the visible part of the ear – as a means of expressive output to extend body language to convey emotional states. With an initial exploratory study, we provide an initial set of dynamic and static auricular postures. Using these results, we examined the relationship between emotions and auricular postures, noting that dynamic postures involving stretching the top helix in fast (e.g., 2Hz) and slow speeds (1Hz) conveyed intense and mild pleasantness while static postures involving bending the side or top helix towards the center of the ear were associated with intense and mild unpleasantness. Based on the results, we developed a prototype (called Orrechio) with miniature motors, custommade robotic arms and other electronic components. A preliminary user evaluation showed that participants feel more comfortable using expressive auricular postures with people they are familiar with, and that it is a welcome addition to the vocabulary of human body language

Clothing gift giving from mothers to children, ages 8 to 12

Gifts of clothing comprise a high proportion of all gifts given and are important to the apparel market. This research used a holistic focus to interpret behavior of mother-child dyads as related to giving gifts of clothing. Objectives were to: (1) Describe the clothing gift-giving behavior of mothers to children including type of clothing selected, motives for selection, satisfaction level of mothers as givers and children as receivers, and consumption practices for clothing gifts; (2) Identify factors associated with variations in clothing gift-giving behavior; (3) Propose a classification of dyads, and (4) Relate findings to existing theory;A naturalistic approach was used to interview 41 mother-child dyads. Content analysis of transcribed interviews inductively identified themes and patterns of behavior;Six major categories of themes were identified. \u27Attitudes Toward Clothing and Appearance\u27 provided understanding of the importance of clothing to these children and their mothers. \u27Consumer Socialization\u27 of children included shopping attitudes, values, and practices of mothers regarding clothing purchases. \u27A Comparison of Gift and Non-Gift Clothing\u27 involved a description of clothing items given as gifts, expenditure for gifts, occasions, and motives for selection. Sources of information for decision-making, factors affecting spending, retail sources, and shopping time and travel comprised a category of \u27Buying Practices.\u27 \u27Presentation of the Gift\u27 included the importance of surprise and reaction of the child to a clothing gift. The impact of a clothing gift on the mother-child relationship emerged in \u27Outcome of the Gift Presentation.\u27 Several themes differed by level of consumption and clothing interest of mothers and children which became discriminating variables used to develop four profiles of mother-child dyads;Mothers made gift decisions in order to maximize their satisfaction and the satisfaction of their children. The definition of a clothing gift was unclear and varied among and within mother-child dyads. Dyads at all levels of consumption used clothing gifts to supplement children\u27s wardrobes. Mothers\u27 efforts to please their children with successful gifts strengthened the mother-child relationship. Communication within dyads was most important in this process. Results revealed the bi-directional character of consumer socialization within mother-child dyads. Recommendations suggest further study of relationships, family compositions, and cultural groups as well as other methods for gift-giving research

Digital Fashion Metamorphosis: Fold and Unfold

The constraints of the current COVID-19 pandemic stimulate the urge for fashion brands and designers to explore 3D technology and utilizing digital space for fashion creation. Being a fashion designer, this urge inspires me to situate my thesis project at the intersection of fashion and technology. I use research-creation as a research approach to engage differently with digital fashion design creation. During my research, I stumbled upon the ancient technique of origami and was drawn to the intricate technique it holds. I also see the possibility embedded in further manipulating the form of origami in digital space through image-based 3D reconstruction photogrammetry technique and 3D software. This thesis project aims to explore how digital body and digitized origami can be combined as an innovative method to influence and create digital fashion design. The creative outcome, Neo-Metamorphosis is a video formatted origami-inspired futuristic fashion runway show. Overall, my thesis project aims to explore new perspectives of digital fashion and stimulate artistic inspiration

Relationship marketing : the dyadic bonding experience between a consumer and a company

This study introduces the concept of the consumer-firm bonding experience. It proposes that consumers develop bonds with firms. This idea has not been fully explored in the literature. This dissertation seeks to offer a contribution to the marketing literature and the marketplace by building upon existing marketing and psychology literature and theory. This study suggests that there is an inherent genotypic-source desire within each consumer to form bonds with selected individuals. These consumer-firm bonds result in a physiognomy and other figural notions such as the consumer\u27s cogito, and response to environmental influences that are grounded in each consumer\u27s unique background of previous experience, culture, and worldview. The research may start to offer additional insight and explanation into some rather intriguing questions that are presently lurking in the domain of consumer behavior. Some of these queries may include asking why customer satisfaction is such a poor indictor of consumer behavior, and why so many of the traditional measures associated with relationship marketing (such as trust, commitment, loyalty, customer satisfaction) are unable to capture much of the richness and depth of the consumer-firm relationship. Although the notion of bonding between two parties is well established in the psychology literature, much of this material has yet to be explored in the domain of marketing with respect to the consumer-firm dyad. From an academician\u27s point of view, relationship marketing has been practiced for many years in the practitioner world. The marketing literature is delinquent in both theory and application of the phenomenon, thus leaving a demand in both the academic literature and practitioner world for increased understanding and practical insights into the consumer-firm bond. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the nature and scope of the consumer-firm bonding phenomenon (Bowlby 1969/1982, 1973, 1980). As consumers engage firms in relationships, they derive both physical and psychological benefit from the union. Firms that recognize this seek to foster these bonds and to strengthen the consumer-firm relationship and, by so doing, are able to gain competitive advantage, thus bringing into focus the managerial relevance of this dissertation (Fournier, Dobscha and Mick 1998). This dissertation supports the notion that the consumer-firm relationship is structurally isomorphic and allows insight into repeat purchasing behavior and consumer purchasing rituals. A general pattern of purchasing behavior can be described in the underlying relationship structure. As respondents were interviewed in this study it was found that they were able to identify the primary aspects of their own bonding experiences with firms. This study employs a qualitative methodology based on the practices of gestalt and existential-phenomenological psychology (Ihde 198; Merleau-Ponty 1962; Pollio, Henley and Thompson 1997; Kohler 1947)

ThermoPixels:Toolkit for Personalizing Arousal-based Interfaces through Hybrid Crafting

Much research has shown the potential of affective interfaces to support people reflect on, and understand their bodily responses. Yet, people find it difficult to engage with, and understand their biodata which they have limited prior experience with. Building on affective interfaces and material-centered design, we developed ThermoPixels, a toolkit including thermochromic and heating materials, as well as galvanic skin response sensors for creating representations of physiological arousal. Within 10 workshops, 20 participants created personalized representations of physiological arousal and its real-time changes using the toolkit. We report on participants’ material exploration, their experience of creating shapes and the use of colors for emotional awareness and regulation. Reflecting on our findings, we discuss embodied exploration and creative expression, the value of technology in emotion regulation and its social context, and the importance of understanding material limitations for effective sense-making

Women and queer British South Asian Instagrammers

The following thesis centers the socio-digital lives of women and queer members from the British South Asian digital diaspora, providing an account of the ambivalent nature of digital identity work. More specifically, it is invested in engaging participants in reflecting on their own engagements and the engagements of others on Instagram. I then critically analyse how they simultaneously resist and reproduce neoliberal logics of social media platforms. I involve participants in reflective interviews related to their digital usage. This approach is a tool underpinned by three theoretical strands that make fluid diaspora experience and digital experience, as well as centering the affective dimensions of social media platforms through the method of in-depth interviews. Practically, I argue that it serves as an animated space within which to analyse data and imaginatively build a community for research purposes. Unlike digital counterpublics like Black Twitter, my participants are individual users and I therefore have created an analytical space through which I can define them as a particular set of users who will have different as well as similar behaviours and opinions. In contextualising participant perceptions within discourses concerning South Asian digital diasporas, I explore how the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and caste are centered and obscured and what this tells us about contemporary configurations of British South Asian identities nationally and globally. Further contextualising these perceptions within wider discourses of neoliberal logics of social media and platform capitalism, I analyse how this technological social mode shapes and is shaped by its users

A qualitative analysis of young Hindi film viewers readings of gender, sexuality and politics on- and off-screen

This thesis presents a qualitative analysis of the connections between meanings made\ud from discourses of gender, sexuality and ethnicity in commercial Hindi films and the\ud construction of gender, sexual and ethnic identity by young adult viewers. While\ud expressing an understanding of cinema texts and audiences as always shaped by and\ud responding to complex intersections of social, psychological and historical events, it\ud also identifies and describes mechanisms of pleasure and discourses of gender\ud ideology in Hindi films from the points of view of 'academic' and 'ordinary' viewers.\ud Original photographs, observations and interviews at cinema halls and transcripts\ud from in-depth interviews with young viewers from diverse social, linguistic and\ud religious backgrounds in Bombay and London provide the bulk of the data. Critical\ud discourse analysis and aspects of social semiotics and Screen theory provide the tools\ud for analysis of the data.\ud This study suggests that young viewers respond to films from a variety of intersecting\ud subject positions; they rarely experience film texts as unitary and organic entities,\ud treating certain sequences as far more significant than others. This study also finds\ud strong connections between the discourses of gender, sexuality and politics articulated\ud by or read into Hindi films and those voiced by young South Asian viewers. Saliently,\ud though certain viewers use sequences in Hindi films as justifications for their political\ud beliefs and/or private actions, others who express similar enjoyment, ridicule or\ud despise the meanings they read into film sequences, remaining wary of their perceived\ud 'effects'. Many Hindi films may be read as ambiguous or overt interventions in\ud conflicts over religious, national, gender and sexual identity, and some young viewers\ud clearly show a predisposition to what can only be called certain films' authoritarian or\ud fascistic imaginaries. For others, pleasure and involvement in aspects of these films\ud does not preclude skepticism or ideological critique