Remarkable Objects: Supporting Collaboration in a Creative Environment

In this paper, we report the results of a field trial of a Ubicomp system called CAM that is aimed at supporting and enhancing collaboration in a design studio environment. CAM uses a mobile-tagging application which allows designers to collaboratively store relevant information onto their physical design objects in the form of messages, annotations and external web links. The purpose of our field trial was to explore the role of augmented objects in supporting and enhancing creative work. Our results show that CAM was used not only used to support participants’ mutual awareness and coordination but also to facilitate designers in appropriating their augmented design objects to be explorative, extendable and playful supporting creative aspects of design work. In general, our results show how CAM transformed static design objects into ‘remarkable’ objects that made the creative and playful side of cooperative design visible

Amplifying Actions - Towards Enactive Sound Design

Recently, artists and designers have begun to use digital technologies in order to stimulate bodily interaction, while scientists keep revealing new findings about sensorimotor contingencies, changing the way in which we understand human knowledge. However, implicit knowledge generated in artistic projects can become difficult to transfer and scientific research frequently remains isolated due to specific disciplinary languages and methodologies. By mutually enriching holistic creative approaches and highly specific scientific ways of working, this doctoral dissertation aims to set the foundation for Enactive Sound Design. It is focused on sound that engages sensorimotor experience that has been neglected within the existing design practices. The premise is that such a foundation can be best developed if grounded in transdisciplinary methods that bring together scientific and design approaches. The methodology adopted to achieve this goal is practice-based and supported by theoretical research and project analysis. Three different methodologies were formulated and evaluated during this doctoral study, based on a convergence of existing methods from design, psychology and human-computer interaction. First, a basic design approach was used to engage in a reflective creation process and to extend the existing work on interaction gestalt through hands-on activities. Second, psychophysical experiments were carried out and adapted to suit the needed shift from reception-based tests to a performance-based quantitative evaluation. Last, a set of participatory workshops were developed and conducted, within which the enactive sound exercises were iteratively tested through direct and participatory observation, questionnaires and interviews. A foundation for Enactive Sound Design developed in this dissertation includes novel methods that have been generated by extensive explorations into the fertile ground between basic design education, psychophysical experiments and participatory design. Combining creative practices with traditional task analysis further developed this basic design approach. The results were a number of abstract sonic artefacts conceptualised as the experimental apparatuses that can allow psychologists to study enactive sound experience. Furthermore, a collaboration between designers and scientists on a psychophysical study produced a new methodology for the evaluation of sensorimotor performance with tangible sound interfaces.These performance experiments have revealed that sonic feedback can support enactive learning. Finally, participatory workshops resulted in a number of novel methods focused on a holistic perspective fostered through a subjective experience of self-producing sound. They indicated the influence that such an approach may have on both artists and scientists in the future. The role of designer, as a scientific collaborator within psychological research and as a facilitator of participatory workshops, has been evaluated. Thus, this dissertation recommends a number of collaborative methods and strategies that can help designers to understand and reflectively create enactive sound objects. It is hoped that the examples of successful collaborations between designers and scientists presented in this thesis will encourage further projects and connections between different disciplines, with the final goal of creating a more engaging and a more aware sonic future.European Commission 6th Framework and European Science Foundation (COST Action

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Enactive Sound Machines: Theatrical Strategies for Sonic Interaction Design

Embodied interaction with digital sound has been subject to much prior research, but a method of coupling simple and intuitive hand actions to the vast potential of digital soundmaking in a perceptually meaningful way remains elusive. At the same time, artistic practices centred on performative soundmaking with objects remain overlooked by researchers. This thesis explores the design and performance of theatre sound effects in Europe and the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in order to converge the embodied knowledge of soundmaking at the heart of this historical practice with present-day design and evaluation strategies from Sonic Interaction Design and Digital Musical Instrument design. An acoustic theatre wind machine is remade and explored as an interactive sounding object facilitating a continuous sonic interaction with a wind-like sound. Its main soundmaking components are digitally modelled in Max/MSP. A prototype digital wind machine is created by fitting the acoustic wind machine with a rotary encoder to activate the digital wind-like sound in performance. Both wind machines are then evaluated in an experiment with participants. The results show that the timbral qualities of the wind-like sounds are the most important factor in how they are rated for similarity, that the rotational speed of both wind machines is not clearly perceivable from their sounds, and that the enactive properties of the acoustic wind machine have not yet been fully captured in the digital prototype. The wind machine’s flywheel mechanism is also found to be influential in guiding participants in their performances. The findings confirm the acoustic wind machine’s ability to facilitate enactive learning, and a more complete picture of its soundmaking components emerges. The work presented in this thesis opens up the potential of mechanisms to couple simple hand actions to complex soundmaking, whether acoustic or digital, in an intuitive way

A Design Anthropology of Place in Service Design: A Methodological Reflection

This paper proposes adopting a Design Anthropology perspective when considering the design of community based services for the elderly. Drawing on two service design projects located in the Byker area of Newcastle, which brought together Ordnance Survey, Age UK Newcastle and a service design Post Graduate Masters programme, this perspective utilises anthropology’s ethnographic method and a specific anthropological theory, to expand service design discourses and reframe the importance of place and place making in the design of community services. In particular, the paper takes the work of Ingold and a phenomenological perspective to explore notions of life as lived to reveal alternative conceptual frames that can often be overlooked in service design. These methods and concepts adopted from anthropology both reveal and theorise the messiness of everyday life. The work goes on to examine the challenges of commensurating these community practices, with the values that the research revealed and to integrate them into viable services of the elderly

User experiences with flexible offices

Different office types provide the preconditions for distinct user experiences. However, research evidence on how users appraise flexible offices such as activity-based or combi offices is not as abundant as in the case of the more traditional open-plan and cell offices. Furthermore, the available literature shows discrepant results between flexible offices. The main difference between traditional and flexible offices is that the design of the latter is intended for users to switch between different shared spaces and workstations oriented to support different activities, needs and preferences. This office design may offer new opportunities and challenges for users as their experiences at work may be influenced by design qualities (or constellations of them) that are not present in traditional offices. I study the experiences of users with flexible offices because I want to understand the influences that the design qualities of office artefacts and spaces have on such experiences, as well as their design implications. In addition, I utilise the acquired knowledge to explore design opportunities for positive user experiences with flexible offices. In this regard, the research angle adopted builds on a UX theoretical background and a practical approach with multiple user studies in real office environments. The findings show that user experiences with flexible offices are influenced by interrelated design qualities of the spaces and artefacts in use, rather than isolated qualities. These (tangible and intangible) qualities define the nature of an artefact, a space, or constellations of them that users experience, for instance the qualities of an office chair vs. a meeting room. Experiences are subjective, but relate to both individual and collective experiences, for example using an ergonomic workstation vs. sharing such workstations. The findings also suggest that designing for user experiences with flexible offices is a highly complex endeavour, and that emphasis should be placed on designing for the experiences of pleasure, community, autonomy, purpose, and control over the environment. Utilising this knowledge to develop and test research prototypes allowed for a richer understanding of the experiential process and its relation to more systemic aspects such as the context of use or the temporality of experiences. Derived from these research activities and their findings, I present in this thesis the tentative SEEX (Stimuli-Evaluation-EXperiential outcome) model of how user experiences take place. This thesis contributes knowledge on theoretical and practical levels for academics and practitioners to continue studying office user experiences from a UX perspective, support informed decisions in the planning, operation, and evaluation of offices, and explore design opportunities for office environments

Prototyping in Business Model Innovation: Exploring the Role of Design Thinking in Business Model Development

This study proposes a theoretical framework for business model prototyping (BMP), one in which design thinking is applied as a means of facilitating business model innovation (BMI). The value of design-led approaches in the development/management of innovation have received increasing recognition in the past decade, as the concept of design thinking (e.g., Brown, 2008; Martin, 2009) has gained broader application and credibility. In parallel, the concept of BMI has been discussed increasingly in research on innovation, as business models have garnered enhanced acknowledgement as a fundamental aspect in innovation management (Schneider & Spieth, 2013). Although experimentation for BMI is argued to be of importance (e.g., Chesbrough, 2010), the ways in which design thinking might inform prototyping of BMI is less articulated. Thus, the research provides a framework for prototyping business models in the process of BMI, and a first theoretical foundation for the subject. The framework is developed by combination of insights from a thoroughgoing literature review with expert interviews, multiple institution-level case studies, and a series of validation interviews. The literature review articulates the concept of prototyping in BMI and covers three topics in-depth: innovation, business models and design thinking. Expert interviews capture the perceptions and orientations of practitioners, and case studies explore various contexts of business model development in social enterprise, university division, governmental organisation and private company. The validation interviews use feedback from industrial experts to aid and revise the framework and combining theoretical and practical perspectives. On the basis of integrated findings, the thesis contributes to knowledge in three ways. First, it aims to bridge design methodology research and innovation management 3 research by articulating prototyping in design with business model innovation. Second, it proposes a theoretical framework for business model prototyping that incorporates four dimensions — purpose, process, context and engagement. This framework provides a theoretical foundation for further research in the area. Third, the thesis reframes prototyping not as a method or a tool but as a methodology (i.e., a conceptual framework and mode of thinking) that supports the management of business model development and innovation

Designing experiences with wearables: A case study exploring the blurring boundaries of art, design, technology, culture and distance

This paper details a workshop aimed at exploring opportunities for experience design through wearable art and design concepts. Specifically it explores the structure of the workshop with respect to facilitating learning through technology in the development of experiential wearable art and design. A case study titled Cloud Workshop: Wearables and Wellbeing; Enriching connections between citizens in the Asia-Pacific region was initiated through a cooperative partnership between Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Griffith University (GU). Digital technologies facilitated collaboration through an inter-disciplinary, inter-national and inter- cultural approach (Facer & Sandford, 2010) between Australia and Hong Kong. Students cooperated throughout a two-week period to develop innovative wearable concepts blending art, design and technology. An unpacking of the approach, pedagogical underpinning and final outcomes revealed distinct educational benefits as well as certain learning and technological challenges of the program. Qualitative feedback uncovered additional successes with respect to student engagement and enthusiasm, while uncovering shortcomings in the delivery and management of information and difficulties with cultural interactions. Potential future versions of the program aim to take advantage of the positives and overcome the limitations of the current pedagogical approach. It is hoped the case study will become a catalyst for future workshops that blur the boundaries of art, design and technology to uncover further benefits and potentials for new outcomes in experience design