〈Article〉Softening Power : Cuteness as Organizational Communication Strategy in Japan and the West

This paper describes the use of cute communications (visual or verbal, and in various media) as an organizational communication strategy prevalent in Japan and emerging in western countries. Insights are offered for the use of such communications and for the understanding/critique thereof. It is first established that cuteness in Japan–kawaii–is chiefly studied as a sociocultural or psychological phenomenon, with too little analysis of its near-omnipresent institutionalization and conveyance as mass media. The following discussion clarifies one reason for this gap in research–the widespread conflation of \u27organizational communication\u27 with advertising/branding, notwithstanding the variety of other messaging–public relations, employee communications, public service announcements, political campaigns–conveyed through cuteness by Japanese institutions. It is then argued that what few theorizations exist of organizational kawaii communications overemphasize their negative aspects or potentials, attributing to them both too much iniquity and too much influence. Outside of Japan studies, there is even less up-to-date scholarship on organizational cuteness, critical or otherwise. And there are no such studies at all, whether focused on Japan or elsewhere, that integrate intercultural insights. In a preliminary contribution toward such knowledge, we discuss the understudied, longstanding, and increasing use of this strategy by western companies. Points of comparison and contrast with Japanese kawaii are highlighted, in both its organizational and pop-cultural aspects, drawing also on sociological studies of the west\u27s current cuteness craze. Guiding insights are offered and future research directions specified, both for those seeking to advise western organizations in communicating cutely, and for those concerned that such softening power will be abused

Whimsical Bodies: Agency and Playfulness in Robotic Art

This thesis examines issues related to agency, playfulness, and behavioral design in robotic art. Using the term ‘whimsical bodies’ (inspired by artist Steve Daniels’, Whimsy, 2008) as an evocative metaphor for the playful ecology and creations of robotic art, I take up historical and contemporary case studies as entry points to a multi-faceted discussion of human-machine engagements considering the lenses of philosophical, art historical and curatorial methodological research. Robotic art’s whimsical bodies are also explored through references to new media scholarship, object-oriented-philosophy, metaphysics and speculative theory. In assessing characteristic features of the art form, such as its playfulness, use of humor, and critique/reconfiguration of wonder as a mode of critical engagement, this thesis aims to move robotic art from the periphery to the center of new media art as a lively and unique field of research

Producing Affection : Affect and Mediated Intimacy in Pokémon

Pokémon is a global multimedia franchise formed around a core series of videogames and a variety of characters to collect, learn about, and play with. Throughout its decades of development, Pokémon has grown into a media mix comprising of digital and analog games, animations, comics, toys, and a plethora of branded merchandize, all centering on the Pokémon characters and the audience’s relationship with them. In this thesis, I explore how affection is formed and distributed in Pokémon. I view the relationship with Pokémon characters as a form of mediated intimacy, theorizing it as feelings of affection and closeness expressed through and aimed at technology. Through this, I discuss how technological and fantastical bodies wield agency and actively participate in the formation of everyday affects. By drawing primarily on game studies and affect studies, I develop an interdisciplinary method for playing and reading media texts for their affects and use it to analyze the media mix of Pokémon and the affective relations therein. I focus primarily on the Pokémon videogames that serve as the core product of the entire media mix. I examine what it means to construct an entire media mix based on videogames and play and suggest this as a key interpretive arrangement for understanding the mediated intimacy of Pokémon. This study presents the mediated intimacy of Pokémon as the result of the ludic and technological foundations of the Pokémon media mix, at the heart of which is the role-playing form of the original videogames and the way they have positioned audiences as participants and characters in the world of Pokémon. In this playful environment that overlaps fiction and everyday reality, the media mix guides its players to conduct a form of affective labor to access and traverse the textual whole of Pokémon and furthermore aligns this effort with the diegetic theme of caretaking as captured on the transmedia bodies of Pokémon. Additionally, this work contributes to the theorization and rethinking of intimacies by exploring affection in human and non-human networks as an entanglement of biological and technological actors.Tuotettua kiintymystä. Pokémonin affekti ja medioitu intiimiys Pokémon on globaali monimediakokonaisuus. Sen keskiössä on joukko videopelejä sekä niiden hahmoja, joita kerätään, joista opitaan ja joiden kanssa leikitään. Pokémonista on vuosikymmenten mittaan kasvanut mediatuotteiden rypäs, media mix: monista tuote- ja julkaisukanavista koostuva kokonaisuus, joka sisältää digitaalisia ja analogisia pelejä, animaatioita, sarjakuvia, leluja ja brändituotteita, joissa kaikissa korostuvat Pokémon-hahmot sekä yleisön suhde niihin. Väitöskirjassani tarkastelen, miten kiintymystä rakennetaan ja levitetään Pokémonissa. Tutkin Pokémon-hahmoihin muodostettuja suhteita medioidun intiimiyden käsitteen kautta. Tutkimuksessani suhteet näyttäytyvät kiintymyksellisten tunteiden tiivistyminä sekä läheisyytenä, jota ilmaistaan teknologian avulla ja sitä kohtaan. Näin tarkastelen, miten teknologisten sekä fantastisten kehojen toimijuus näkyy arkipäiväisten affektien muodostumisessa. Ammentamalla pelitutkimuksesta ja affektitutkimuksesta kehitän monitieteisen metodin mediatekstien pelaamiseen ja lukemiseen, ja käytän sitä Pokémonin media mixin, sen affektien ja sen piirissä muodostettujen kiintymyssuhteiden analysointiin. Keskityn erityisesti Pokémon-videopeleihin, jotka toimivat koko media mixin ydintuotteena. Tutkin, miten Pokémonin media mix on rakennettu ensisijaisesti pelilliselle ja leikilliselle pohjalle, ja ehdotan tätä tulkintamallia keskeiseksi Pokémonin medioidun intiimiyden ymmärtämiselle. Tutkimuksen tuloksena esitän Pokémonin medioidun intiimiyden muodostuvan Pokémonin media mixin leikillisistä ja teknologisista juurista, joiden perustana on alkuperäisten Pokémon-videopelien roolipelillinen rakenne sekä se, miten sen avulla pelaajat on asemoitu hahmoiksi Pokémonin maailmaan. Fiktiota ja todellisuutta sekoittavassa leikillisessä ympäristössä Pokémonin media mix ohjaa pelaajia hoivan ja huolenpidon teemojen kautta tekemään tunnetyötä tuoteperheen mediatekstien parissa ja piirtää tämän työn tulokset Pokémon-hahmojen monimediakehoille. Lisäksi väitöstutkimukseni osallistuu intiimiyden laajempaan teoretisointiin ja uudelleenmäärittelyyn tarkastelemalla elollisten ja leikillisesti elävien toimijoiden suhteita biologisena ja teknologisena yhteenliittymän

The data hungry home

It's said that the pleasure is in the giving, not the receiving. This belief is validated by how humans interact with their family, friends and society as well as their gardens, homes, and pets. Yet for ubiquitous devices, this dynamic is reversed with devices as the donors and owners as the recipients. This paper explores an alternative paradigm where these devices are elevated, becoming members of Data Hungry Homes, allowing us to build relationships with them using the principles that we apply to family, pets or houseplants. These devices are developed to fit into a new concept of the home, can symbiotically interact with us and possess needs and traits that yield unexpected positive or negative outcomes from interacting with them. Such relationships could enrich our lives through our endeavours to “feed” our Data Hungry Homes, possibly leading us to explore new avenues and interactions outside and inside the home

The Institute of New Feelings: Plastic Identities and Imperfect Surfaces

Digital media are moldable spaces where an image is simultaneously a thought. This instance and flexibility enables digital existences to be malleable, transformative, situational, and unstable. They are plastic images. Video games generate digital bodies that are a fusion of subjectivities and cybernetic simulations, in a perceivable and ambiguous process. Such bodies are extensions of ourselves, being girlish, imperfect, unfinished and happening—digesting and emitting clusters of feelings, regardless of our biological gender and age. The performative experience of play is progressively departing from spectacle, gambling and competition, and increasingly shifting towards an emotional journey of alternate realities, spreading subjectivities into the visible and invisible areas of screens. Such experience, and our plastic identities that reside within, marks a collaborative attempt between designers and audience to establish a new protocol of liquid perspectives functioning within and beyond digital space. Digital plasticity itself is a practice, as well as an inextricable process of understanding and deploying identities in the contemporary media-saturated pluralistic environment

How play moves us: Toys, technologies, and mobility in a digital world

The 21st century has been described as the Century of Play. The change in current play is particularly noticeable when looking at technological developments. This thesis deals with the technologization, digitalization, and connectedness of play between 2010–2020. The research explores forms of contemporary play, playthings, and players in a time when digitalization and connectedness have extended to various tools and realms of play—devices, toys, games, apps, and mediated playful environments. At the heart of the research are playthings and technologies conceptualized here as play machines, players using these tools within their communities and contexts, and, due to technological change, play research that increasingly expands into digital and networked cultures. Interactive digital devices have made play ubiquitous, and this includes play activities related to toys, mobile technologies, digital cameras, smartphones, digital toys, social media, and social robotics. The purpose of the thesis is to increase the understanding of what the rapid technologization of play, or what is conceptualized in the thesis as the digital leap of play, means in terms of mobilizing the players physically, cognitively, and emotionally. The thesis opens up prospects for technology-enriched play by presenting a range of empirical studies interested in the mobilization tendencies of current digital devices, toys, and connected media cultures that inform and inspire contemporary play and players of different ages as a form of digital culture that unites players and generations. The assumption is that digital technology connected to modern play experiences can move players in physical, cognitive, and emotional terms. Through six qualitative case studies, the thesis proposes to answer the central question: “How has play moved human players of the Western world in 2010–2020 in terms of physical, cognitive, and emotional mobility/movement?” The sub-question inquires what kinds of digital play are encountered in interactions of people of different ages as part of technologically enhanced leisure, learning, and environments where play is increasingly happening with and through machines and social media platforms by asking: “How are the acts of play realized in each instance of digital play through technology use, and what are the functions of the play for the players in each study?” The thesis seeks to understand the nature and various aspects of the digital transformation of play and balance the prevailing negative assumptions with more positive and optimistic views on the effect of technology-oriented play on the lives of players of different ages. The scholarly contribution of the thesis is to generate new play knowledge: The publications included in the thesis highlight various play patterns and practices among children of preschool age, adults, and seniors who engage in digital play through the use of digital devices or digital toys, either solitarily or socially, as part of intergenerational play. The findings of the thesis illustrate how changes in the ecosystem of play (primarily made possible by developing mobile technology and social media) are linked to the opportunities for players to engage in creative play activities, their documentation, and their social sharing. The connections of evolving digital technology (for example, digital toys, social media networking, and social robotics) to play are diverse; mobile devices with and without screens are used as an extension of play to enrich the experiences and outcomes of play and to empower the players by allowing them to showcase their imagination, creativity, and ability to connect with peers and other player communities. The thesis concludes that contemporary technology embodied in digital devices and Internet-connected playthings as the play machines of 2010–2020 allows for the expansion of play into human and toy interactions that non-technological playthings would not support. Technological development thus expands the historical, digital-material, and narrative dimensions of play. Social, technology-supported play triggers cultural processes that also support intergenerational interaction in play. Consequently, this thesis suggests that 1) digital technology is a driver for societal changes that affect play, 2) digital technology is a mobilizer of players in a physical, cognitive, emotional, and social sense, and 3) digital technology is an enabling, empowering, and enriching resource for contemporary digital play

Chapter 13 Haptic Creatures

Collaborations between entertainment industries and artificial intelligence researchers in Japan have since the mid-1990s produced a growing interest in modeling affect and emotion for use in mass-produced social robots. Robot producers and marketers reason that such robot companions can provide comfort, healing (iyashi), and intimacy in light of attenuating social bonds and increased socioeconomic stress characteristic of Japanese society since the collapse of the country’s bubble economy in the early 1990s. While many of these robots with so-called “artificial emotional intelligence” are equipped with rudimentary capacities to “read” predefined human emotion through such mechanisms as facial expression recognition, a new category of companion robots are more experimental. These robots do not interpret human emotion through affect-sensing software but rather invite human-robot interaction through affectively pleasing forms of haptic feedback. These new robots are called haptic creatures: robot companions designed to deliver a sense of comforting presence through a combination of animated movements and healing touch. Integrating historical analysis with ethnographic interviews with new users of these robots, and focusing in particular on the cat-like cushion robot Qoobo, this chapter argues that while companion robots are designed in part to understand specific human emotions, haptic creatures are created as experimental devices that can generate new and unexpected pleasures of affective care unique to human-robot relationships. It suggests that this distinction is critical for understanding and evaluating how corporations seek to use human-robot affect as a means to deliver care to consumers while also researching and building new markets for profit maximization

From Awareness to Action: Exploring End-User Empowerment Interventions for Dark Patterns in UX

The study of UX dark patterns, i.e., UI designs that seek to manipulate user behaviors, often for the benefit of online services, has drawn significant attention in the CHI and CSCW communities in recent years. To complement previous studies in addressing dark patterns from (1) the designer's perspective on education and advocacy for ethical designs; and (2) the policymaker's perspective on new regulations, we propose an end-user-empowerment intervention approach that helps users (1) raise the awareness of dark patterns and understand their underlying design intents; (2) take actions to counter the effects of dark patterns using a web augmentation approach. Through a two-phase co-design study, including 5 co-design workshops (N=12) and a 2-week technology probe study (N=15), we reported findings on the understanding of users' needs, preferences, and challenges in handling dark patterns and investigated the feedback and reactions to users' awareness of and action on dark patterns being empowered in a realistic in-situ setting.Comment: Conditionally Accepted at CSCW 202

Anthropomorphic Objects

This thesis exhibition is the culmination of an exploration of the uncanny through sculptures that evoke the sensation of a living presence. Each sculpture is also intended to convey some character or personality, and to this end, my work is influenced by puppetry. Though the works are human sized, they function as puppets in that they are posable and can be used for performance, but they are also robotic in that they have some autonomous motion and some reactive motion. My sculptures are based on the human form because the human form is at once most uncanny and also most relatable. Relatability is an important aspect of my work, as I use my humanoid sculptures to create playful interactive experiences for viewers, experiences that hinge on the uncanny and the illusion of presence