The affective body argument in technology design

In this paper, I argue that the affective body is underused in the design of interactive technology despite what it has to offer. Whilst the literature shows it to be a powerful affective communication channel, it is often ignored in favor of the more commonly studied facial and vocal expression modalities. This is despite it being as informative and in some situations even more reliable than the other affective channels. In addition, due to the proliferation of increasingly cheaper and ubiquitous movement sensing technologies, the regulatory affective functions of the body could open new possibilities in various application areas. In this paper, after presenting a brief summary of the opportunities that the affective body offers to technology designers, I will use the case of physical rehabilitation to discuss how its use could lead to interesting new solutions and more effective therapies

Automatic Recognition of Protective Behaviour in Chronic Pain Rehabilitation

Exergames are increasingly being proposed for physical rehabilitation in chronic pain. They can be engaging, fun and can facilitate the setting of targets and evaluating performances through body movement tracking and multimodal feedback. While these attributes are important, it is also essential that psychological factors that lead to avoidance of physical activity are addressed in the game design. Anxiety about increased pain and/or of further damage often causes people to behave in a self-protective manner (e.g., guarding movement) and to avoid particular movements. Protective behaviour may itself cause increased pain or strain. In this paper we investigate the possibility to automatically detect such behavior. Automatic detection of protective behaviour can be used to adapt the exergame at run time to alleviate anxiety and increase treatment efficacy

Radically Relational: Using Textiles As A Platform To Develop Methods For Embodied Design Processes

This position paper builds on textiles as a metaphor to explore the experiential knowledge observed through embodied design processes. In order to build understanding, we have tailored our tools and methods to support our explorations so far. As literature shows articulating our sensory experiences with materials is a challenging task. In order to support our investigations, in this paper we present a reflection on our diverse approaches to introduce tools that support us in interrogating how designers relate with materials, particularly textiles, and use their sensorial body to experience them during the creative process. We build on our previous research that identified relevant embodied process to textile selection, and reflect on how we have explored how sensing technology can augment and empower each of these phases, to support the design process. We conclude by discussing the learning outcomes from introducing such tools, in order to reflect on the future of our research

Bodily Expression of Social Initiation Behaviors in ASC and non-ASC children: Mixed Reality vs. LEGO Game Play

This study is part of a larger project that showed the potential of our mixed reality (MR) system in fostering social initiation behaviors in children with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). We compared it to a typical social intervention strategy based on construction tools, where both mediated a face-to-face dyadic play session between an ASC child and a non-ASC child. In this study, our first goal is to show that an MR platform can be utilized to alter the nonverbal body behavior between ASC and non-ASC during social interaction as much as a traditional therapy setting (LEGO). A second goal is to show how these body cues differ between ASC and non-ASC children during social initiation in these two platforms. We present our first analysis of the body cues generated under two conditions in a repeated-measures design. Body cue measurements were obtained through skeleton information and characterized in the form of spatio-temporal features from both subjects individually (e.g. distances between joints and velocities of joints), and interpersonally (e.g. proximity and visual focus of attention). We used machine learning techniques to analyze the visual data of eighteen trials of ASC and non-ASC dyads. Our experiments showed that: (i) there were differences between ASC and non-ASC bodily expressions, both at individual and interpersonal level, in LEGO and in the MR system during social initiation; (ii) the number of features indicating differences between ASC and non-ASC in terms of nonverbal behavior during initiation were higher in the MR system as compared to LEGO; and (iii) computational models evaluated with combination of these different features enabled the recognition of social initiation type (ASC or non-ASC) from body features in LEGO and in MR settings. We did not observe significant differences between the evaluated models in terms of performance for LEGO and MR environments. This might be interpreted as the MR system encouraging similar nonverbal behaviors in children, perhaps more similar than the LEGO environment, as the performance scores in the MR setting are lower as compared to the LEGO setting. These results demonstrate the potential benefits of full body interaction and MR settings for children with ASC.EPSR

Radically Relational Tools: A Design Framework to Explore Materials through Embodied Processes

In a context where fashion design and retail activities are increasingly transferring to the digital environment, mediating touch has become a matter of concern for the field. However, as literature shows, articulating our sensory experiences with materials is a challenging task. This position paper explores the experiential knowledge observed through embodied design processes. This is done by analysing our diverse approaches to introduce tools that help designers to understand people’s perceptual experience with textile materials. We build on our previous research that identified relevant embodied processes to textile selection, and reflect on how we have explored how sensing technology can augment and empower each of these processes, thereby supporting design. We conclude by discussing the learning outcomes of analysing such tools, in order to reflect on the future of our research applied to the digital realm

Dossier y guía de autoayuda para la mejora del malestar docente

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo dar una panorámica sobre el burnout en el ámbito docente y aportar herramientas para la prevención y afrontamiento de situaciones de estres laboral del profesorado, así como el desarrollo de altos niveles de resieliencia, todo desde un enfoque multidisciplinar.127 p