11 research outputs found
Investigating Genres and Perspectives in HCI Research on the Home
The home and domestic experiences have been studied from multiple points of view and disciplines, with an array of methodologies in the past twenty-five years in HCI. Given the attention to the home and the volume of research, what further areas of research might there be? Based on a critical analysis of 121 works on the topic, we present seven genres of domestic technology research in HCI: social routines in the home, ongoing domestic practices, the home as a testing ground, smart homes, contested values of a home, the home as a site for interpretation, and speculative visions of the home. We articulate dominant research perspectives in HCI, and we offer two complementary perspectives about how to investigate the domestic experience in future research: the material perspective and the first person perspective
The Datacatcher: Batch Deployment and Documentation of 130 Location-Aware, Mobile Devices That Put Sociopolitically-Relevant Big Data in People's Hands: Polyphonic Interpretation at Scale
This paper reports the results of a field trial of 130 bespoke devices as well as our methodological approach to the undertaking. Datacatchers are custom-built, location-aware devices that stream messages about the area they are in. Derived from a large number of ‘big data’ sources, the messages simultaneously draw attention to the socio-political topology of the lived environment and to the nature of big data itself. We used a service design consultancy to deploy the devices, and two teams of documentary filmmakers to capture participants’ experiences. Here we discuss the development of this approach and how people responded to the Datacatchers as products, as revealing sociopolitical issues, and as purveyors of big data that might be open to question
Investigating Genres and Perspectives in HCI Research on the Home
ABSTRACT The home and domestic experiences have been studied from multiple points of view and disciplines, with an array of methodologies in the past twenty-five years in HCI. Given the attention to the home and the volume of research, what further areas of research might there be? Based on a critical analysis of 121 works on the topic, we present seven genres of domestic technology research in HCI: social routines in the home, ongoing domestic practices, the home as a testing ground, smart homes, contested values of a home, the home as a site for interpretation, and speculative visions of the home. We articulate dominant research perspectives in HCI, and we offer two complementary perspectives about how to investigate the domestic experience in future research: the material perspective and the first person perspective
Communication and Non-Speaking Children with Physical Disabilities: Opportunities and Reflections from Design-Oriented Research
This thesis presents a series of design-oriented studies for investigating and describing communication involving children with severe speech and physical impairments (SSPIs). The overarching goal is to inform how designers conceptualise communication that involves children with SSPIs beyond a widely cited view that communication centres around speech and happens at the level of the individual through the transmission of information. Instead, by positioning communication as co-constructed, situated and multimodal, the goal is to stimulate how one designs for digitally mediated communication by applying multiple, alternative frames that acknowledge these features. In order to achieve this goal, qualitative empirical fieldwork is undertaken that examines the everyday communication experiences of five children who have SSPIs. Drawing on theoretical influences from multimodal social semiotics and participatory design, study one and two investigate child centred accounts of communication involving children with SSPIs and their peers. The focus is on investigating communication, first in formal learning contexts involving existing augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies, then in broader contexts beyond AAC use. Multi-layered perspectives are generated that consider: 1. a child’s view, by attending to children’s values and choices of modes; 2. an interactional view that attends to how communication is co-constructed in situ with other people and material objects, and; 3. a structural view, that examines the orderings of people, material objects and activities within an environment. These layered understandings produce research frames that are then utilised in study three. A design documentary is created and used to motivate design work for supporting face to face communication involving children with SSPIs and their peers with a team of designers who do not hold fixed orientations to designing assistive technologies. The findings of the three studies make three new contributions to the fields of HCI and AAC. First, the findings produce a theoretical perspective on communication, acknowledging multiple modes and displacing the taken for granted centrality of language. Second, the findings reveal design opportunities for new and existing technologies. Third, the studies contribute methodological insights for design work by considering ways of involving both children and designers when designing with and for children with SSPIs
Playful engagements in product design: developing a theoretical framework for ludo-aesthetic interactions in kitchen appliances
This research is an investigation into the playful aspects of designed products.
Defining playfulness in products, besides and beyond utilitarian functions and
aesthetics, is at the heart of this thesis. In product design research, playfulness, this
indispensable element of our mediated world, is either superficially limited to visual
seduction or entangled with new technologies that it seems as if play appears as
peripheral. The main objective of this research, therefore, is to understand how play
can be embodied within a product at the design stage.
The research has been supported by a considerable body of literature on the
definition of play, product reviews and qualitative fieldwork studies. The fieldwork
and ethnographic research was conducted in three stages. First, a series of semi-structured
interviews were carried out with second-year product design students at
the Edinburgh College of Art. The aim was to examine their understanding of the
playful aspects in their own interactive design. The second stage was a series of
focus group discussions held with women over the age of 65 to explore how they
understand and interpret playfulness in the context of kitchen appliances, and how
the change of functions may affect their attitudes toward the activities of their
everyday life. Finally, through using a number of ethnographic research methods,
five Edinburgh women, aged between 25 and 35, were observed in their kitchens to
assess their style of cooking and the way they interacted with their chosen household
products.
As a result of these field studies, four main aspects of playfulness in these
interactions were discovered: communicative and social aspects, dynamic and bodily
engagement, the distractive and immersive quality of play and finally, the ‘self-reflective’
aspects of play. The latter is indebted to the idea of ‘ludification of
societies’ proposed by Jos De Mul (2005), who draws attention to the increase of
playful activities in Western societies in the 21st century and the emergence of a new
state of identity, or ‘ludic identity’. In considering this exploration, I have developed
a new framework for the ludo-aesthetics of interaction based on the ‘aesthetics of interaction’ which aims to explain the deeper meanings of playful engagements in
product interactions.
By defining play and reviewing the possibilities of playfulness in products, I have
created a taxonomy of playful products, providing a broad spectrum of play, from
visually and functionally playful to more subtle and hidden agendas, which only can
be highlighted through the active role of users. The findings to emerge from this
study are, firstly, playfulness in product design is not an emotion elicited from using
a product but rather is a mode, with a broad range of interactions, from objective to
subjective, and from personal to social. Second, to assign any attribute of playfulness
to a product without considering the contribution of the user, the socio-cultural
environment of use and the reflective and constructive interactions of users with
products is reductive and superficial. In order to make these findings more tangible
for designers and students in product design, I have visualised four food-related
scenarios by imaginative personas based on the observations I made in the course of
the fieldwork. In addition, I have drawn upon the term ‘replay’ (normally associated
with gaming) to demonstrate that playfulness can occur through recalling the objects
of the past, the culture of reusing and recycling, and retro style.
In essence, this PhD sets the parameters of what designers should be aware of while
dealing with people’s playful interactions with products. It is my belief that such
awareness, as a complementary element of aesthetic interactions, will help designers
to expand their territory of research and widen their scope for design practices
Estudio teórico-práctico de la Cameroa Obscura y de la Camera Lucida. Una nueva propuesta de máquina de dibujo digital
La tesis propone la creación y el desarrollo de una nueva
máquina de dibujo digital en la que el acto de dibujar
permita ver más y conocer mejor. Con base en los
estudios teóricos-prácticos de la cámara oscura y la
cámara lúcida, como dispositivos para dibujo de imagen.
En la primera parte se presenta la investigación teórica-práctica de estos dispositivos, con especial énfasis en el
análisis histórico y conceptual de la evolución tecnológica
que se complementa con la utilización de las máquinas
como un medio para representar y cuestionar la realidad.
Este análisis se complementa con la presentación de
otras referencias que van desde la ingenierÃa informática
a las artes visuales, durante el siglo 20 hasta la
actualidad, como contribución a un conocimiento
actualizado de los conceptos subyacentes del dibujo y los
mecanismos que aquà se presentan. En los CapÃtulos 2 a
4 se realiza un estudio de los mecanismos de percepción
visual que participan en este tipo de dibujo (cap.2), el
dibujo como un medio para la comprensión (cap.3), y la
localización como una posible intención de ver más (cap.
4). Estos tres capÃtulos son transversales en toda la tesis.
En la segunda parte, los experimentos que apoyan la
metodologÃa utilizada y que están en el origen de las
diferentes versiones de la máquina son presentados.
El módulo computacional está programado en Pure Data,
y toda la máquina se compone como un sistema modular,
con una gran elasticidad y posibilidades de desarrollo.
El uso de la máquina permite la percepción del acto de
dibujar, y al mismo tiempo indica nuevas posibilidades
para futuros desarrollos.Faustino Dos Santos, JP. (2012). Estudio teórico-práctico de la Cameroa Obscura y de la Camera Lucida. Una nueva propuesta de máquina de dibujo digital [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17867Palanci
Designing the domestic Internet of Things using a practice-orientated perspective
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of sensing, actuating and networked objects, often discussed as delivering efficiency through machine determined, automated decision making and action to achieve ‘Smartness’ in a logistically based paradigm. When applied to the domestic space these values are touted as beneficially controlling lighting, heating and entertainment to improve efficiency and comfort, while reducing costs. This approach follows the external goods of effectiveness, reducing everything to an objective value/cost proposition; however, the home is a subjectively experienced space incorporating differing values, so this reductive perspective overlooks a wider spectrum of inhabitant’s concerns relating to their daily activities and the domestic space. Furthermore, this approach can supplant involvement in domestic activities by treating these as computable problems to solve, alienating users through automation, a lack of transparency and poor understanding of the reasoning behind machine decision making.
Existing attempts to address this topic indicate Techno-Centric approaches impact on understanding and engagement with the domestic space; Human-Centric perspectives focus on supporting people’s subjective experiences by prioritising their activities, sense-making and sensory experiences within the design process; Beyond Human-Centric IoT perspectives broaden this understanding to propose non-hierarchical, flat ontologies for the IoT and the implications this has on integrating human/non-human agency in the IoT, generally and domestically. This supported an approach utilising Practice Theory, a development of organising concepts for theorising social life, with sociality dependent on activities conducted with materials to develop a coherent sense of self and which understands place as a meshwork of human/non-human agency.
Practice Theory is applied within a Design Research approach using a synergistic Participatory Action Research (PAR) / Participatory Design (PD) process. Exploring Domestic Practices contextualised the IoT through a range of methods including interactive installations, interviews and design workshops, uncovering participant attitudes towards the IoT, generating Practice Themes and specific examples of practices and constituent elements. These acted as User Generated Values (UGV) in a Values-Led PD process to inform the project pathway and the conceptualisation of a Practice-Oriented IoT through PAR’s Action-Reflection spirals. Additionally, a parallel PD process explored the effective communication of UGV within Professional Design Practice (PDP) workshops with the intent of reducing communicative distance between end-users and developers, supporting communication of user’s attitudes towards the IoT and Practice within PDP through inclusion as guiding values. Models of the IoT balancing Practice and technical concerns, workshops and toolkit were developed iteratively, leading to an outcome modelling the IoT and Practice within a flat ontology. Through this, and by embedding Practice within the IoT itself, IoT agency was reframed from automation towards assistiveness in Practice and IoT values shifted from efficiency in external goods of effectiveness towards internally derived goods of excellence, supporting skill development, engagement and reflection on action.
This identifies the value of using PAR and PD to consider people’s values, goals and existing practices when developing the domestic IoT. This was particularly valuable in exploring Practice to understand people’s activities in the home and contextualise attitudes towards the IoT. This informed the development of a framework balancing the IoT’s technological nature with people’s activities and values, a system guided by Practice elements reciprocally informing and supporting participant engagement in dynamically developing domestic practices