From interaction to performance with public displays

Abstract Interacting with public displays involves more than what happens between individuals and the system; it also concerns how people experience others around and through those displays. In this paper, we use ''performance'' as an analytical lens for understanding experiences with a public display called rhythIMs and explore how displays shift social interaction through their mediation. By performance, we refer to a situation in which people are on display and orient themselves toward an audience that may be co-located, imagined, or virtual. To understand interaction with public displays, we use two related notions of collectives-audiences and groups-to highlight the ways in which people orient to each other through public displays. Drawing examples from rhythIMs, a public display that shows patterns of instant messaging and physical presence, we demonstrate that there can be multiple, heterogeneous audiences and show how people experience these different types of collectives in various ways. By taking a performance perspective, we are able to understand how audiences that were not physically co-present with participants still influenced participants' interpretations and interactions with rhythIMs. This extension of the traditional notion of audience illuminates the roles audiences can play in a performance

User experience and interactive technology in fashion stores

Many fashion brands have already incorporated interactive technology (IT) into their stores as a means to provide consumers with digital experiences. Interactive technology enables consumers, that is, store visitors, to explore the digital world of the brand interactively while being immersed with the physical store elements. Consumers can therefore have experiences in both physical and digital worlds. It can be argued that the integration of interactive technology in fashion stores can potentially heighten the overall consumer experience. The research purpose was to explore consumer experience with interactive technology in fashion stores. More specifically, it centres on the evaluation of consumers' interaction experience with the digital world while in parallel experiencing the physical world. Given that the underlying phenomenon concerns interaction between humans and interactive devices, a user experience design (UXD) approach was adopted for this research; as the lens for the literature review, the methodology and the analysis of data. The strategy for the primary research was rapid ethnography; combining three methods: protocol analysis, observation and interview. The data collection was undertaken for over eleven months, consisting of two main studies and eight data collection activities (DCAs). Fifty-one people participated in the studies and DCAs. All the data were analysed via five stages, in which one prominent UXD framework: the four threads of experience (4TE), was utilised for the analysis process. The findings are presented thematically; there are four main themes and nine subthemes. All of these embody Insights and narratives for responding to the research questions. The first core concept that can be taken from the findings is the notion of dynamic experience referring to a moment in which the users of interactive technology (IT) can experience the two world frames of digital and physical dynamically. Another core concept is channel harmonisation that refers to the implementation of a balanced channel. The research demonstrates the suitability of UXD as an interactive design theory or framework for fashion marketing research concerning experiences of technology. Implications for research and recommendations are provided

Coupling quantified bodies: transformative play through self-quantification

One of the promises behind self-quantification is to transform the ways in which we live our lives through the collection of numerical evidence about the body and its activity. Although this process may boost self-knowledge, everyday life involves a complex network of relationships with other bodies that exert a significant, sometimes determining, influence on how we act. This complexity is poorly captured by a purely quantitative perspective that is only concerned with individual behaviour. Digital self-quantification data—such as that generated by wearable activity trackers—opens new possibilities to transform current unhealthy social practices, like the ones related to sedentary lifestyles. In this work, I explore how interaction designers may design self-quantification systems which support transformative play. I do so by reframing self-quantification data as something to be modulated into perturbations to other human and non-human bodies that participate in existing social practices and establish new couplings between selves. By coupling quantified bodies, a new dynamic of co-evolution through embodied interactions is enabled, which, in turn, affects the elements that realise, perform and reproduce existing social practices. Taking a research-through-design approach, I have studied three designs in everyday contexts of use, drawing from different qualitative methods such as cultural probes, participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Each system puts forward different modulations of self-quantification data, enabling screen-based, tangible and embodied interactions. Firstly, I designed Watch your Steps, a shared, situated display of an individual’s number of steps for a collocated group of co-workers. Secondly, I designed Dyna, a meeting table that self-adjusts its height based on a group’s levels of activity. Finally, I designed Dataponics: Human–Vegetal Play, a system in which a quantified plant receives water and light according to someone’s walking activity, then plays different music styles according to its moisture level. In these designs, self-quantification couplings were designed to enable play that transforms social practices while preserving players’ autonomy and individuality. I have also tried (sometimes without success) to avoid both coercion and prescribing limited courses of action. By applying these values, these designs enabled new forms of play which in some cases had transformative power. Based on analysis of these studies, I explore some of the implications of embracing play-inspired design values to enable social change, discussing insights and design tensions when designing self-quantification systems that go beyond the self and the numbers. I also speculate about the future of self-quantification, keeping a critical distance from current self-quantification systems. With this work, I aim to expand our understanding of the transformative possibilities of play in the context of self-quantification and the transformation of social practices