A framework for graceful interaction for web interface design / Wan Norizan Wan Hashim

It is argued that the design of life experiences with digital artifact should be aligned with the rich experience of the physical sensory life. The emphasis of functionality and efficiency of digital artifact is currently being infiltrated with new design criteria such as friendliness, playfulness, aesthetically pleasing and emotionally satisfying. Designing for aesthetic interaction is designing for a beauty that is rewarding in itself leading to aesthetic experience, which involves bodily skills and emotional sensitivity. Following the argument that form in an aesthetic experience has deep roots in organic bodily rhythms and the social conditions which help structure them, we conceptualize graceful interaction as a form to enrich user experience. Using the design science approach, graceful interaction is conceptualized through the abstraction of graceful dance movement that was derived from an interview with an art performance expert. The graceful dance movement elements is then mapped into the set of graceful interaction design elements obtained from the integration of Laban Effort Movement Theory with effort qualities of movement by Bacigalupi. This mapping is the basis of the prescription of the graceful interaction design framework that also encompasses the criteria of movement quality. The framework was then validated through experimental work

Beauty, elegance, grace, and sexiness compared

Beauty is the single most frequently and most broadly used aesthetic virtue term. The present study aimed at providing higher conceptual resolution to the broader notion of beauty by comparing it with three closely related aesthetically evaluative concepts which are likewise lexicalized across many languages: elegance, grace(fulness), and sexiness. We administered a variety of questionnaires that targeted perceptual qualia, cognitive and affective evaluations, as well as specific object properties that are associated with beauty, elegance, grace, and sexiness in personal looks, movements, objects of design, and other domains. This allowed us to reveal distinct and highly nuanced profiles of how a beautiful, elegant, graceful, and sexy appearance is subjectively perceived. As aesthetics is all about nuances, the fine-grained conceptual analysis of the four target concepts of our study provides crucial distinctions for future research

The Manta Project: Conception, Implementation, and Reflections on a Cable Array Robot and its Interfaces

We have created and flown a cable array robot based flying sculpture. This sculp ture, in its various versions, flew in both Rochester, New York and London, England. This thesis both explores the construction of the flying sculpture and presents a pub lished paper wherein an Human-Robotic Interaction design space is proposed to facilitate discussion of robotic interfaces

The Photosynthesiser - A methodology for mapping environmental conditions, pivotal to the speed of photosynthesis in plants, through sonification.

Traditionally, the close inspection of data requires visual guidance in the form of displays depicting numeric or graphical representations over time. Sonification offers a way to convey this data through auditory means, relinquishing the need for constant display monitoring. To enable horticulturists to continue to move and work around their environment a proposed sonification mapping system for the key environmental conditions, vital for optimum levels of photosynthesis, has been developed. The outcome of this research was to provide a monitoring system that was both musical and meaningful with regards to data fluctuations and most importantly, could be interpreted by a wide demographic of listeners. A literature review provides an underpinning to both the scientific and artistic merits of sonification whilst a practice-based model was used to develop appropriate musical timbres, offering a natural instrumentation through physical modelling synthesis. Key questions around which musical factors can be used to trigger specific emotions and which of these emotions do we associate with an environment that offers a higher rate or low rate of photosynthesis for plants are explored. Through literary research as well as the deployment and analysis of surveys, a list of musical parameters was identified and a mapping framework designed. To analyse the success of the design, an audio installation was constructed within grounds at the Eden Project. The environmental data of both biomes, tropical and Mediterranean, were sonified into two musical streams and visitors surveyed through quantitative and qualitative methods in an experiment to see if they could correctly associate the music to the biome. The results provided 90% accuracy in the correct identification. It is theorised through this research that the mapping framework designed can be used in the sonification of climate conditions and communicate key traits within each environment

People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement: Taking Stock of the Place Initiative

This report serves as a point of entry into creative placemaking as defined and supported by the Tucson Pima Arts Council's PLACE Initiative. To assess how and to what degree the PLACE projects were helping to transform communities, TPAC was asked by the Kresge Foundation to undertake a comprehensive evaluation. This involved discussion with stakeholders about support mechanisms, professional development, investment, and impact of the PLACE Initiative in Tucson, Arizona, and the Southwest regionally and the gathering of qualitative and quantitative data to develop indicators and method for evaluating the social impact of the arts in TPAC's grantmaking. The report documents one year of observations and research by the PLACE research team, outside researchers and reviewers, local and regional working groups, TPAC staff, and TPAC constituency. It considers data from the first four years of PLACE Initiative funding, including learning exchanges, focus groups, individual interviews, grantmaking, and all reporting. It is also informed by evaluation and assessment that occurred in the development of the PLACE Initiative, in particular, Maribel Alvarez's Two-Way Mirror: Ethnography as a Way to Assess Civic Impact of Arts-Based Engagement in Tucson, Arizona (2009), and Mark Stern and Susan Seifert's Documenting Civic Engagement: A Plan for the Tucson Pima Arts Council (2009). Both of these publications were supported by Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, that promotes arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. Both publications describe how TPAC approaches evaluation strategies associated with social impact of the arts in Tucson and Pima County. This report outlines the local context and historical antecedents of the PLACE Initiative in the region with an emphasis on the concept of "belonging" as a primary characteristic of PLACE projects and policy. It describes PLACE projects as well as the role of TPAC in creating and facilitating the Initiative. Based on the collective understanding of the research team, impacts of the PLACE Initiative are organized into three main realms -- institutions, artists, and communities. These realms are further addressed in case studies from select grantees, whose narratives offer rich, detailed perspectives about PLACE projects in context, with all their successes, rewards, and challenges for artists, communities, and institutions. Lastly, the report offers preliminary research findings on PLACE by TPAC in collaboration with Dr. James Roebuck, codirector of the University of Arizona's ERAD (Evaluation Research and Development) Program

Training Physics-based Controllers for Articulated Characters with Deep Reinforcement Learning

In this thesis, two different applications are discussed for using machine learning techniques to train coordinated motion controllers in arbitrary characters in absence of motion capture data. The methods highlight the resourcefulness of physical simulations to generate synthetic and generic motion data that can be used to learn various targeted skills. First, we present an unsupervised method for learning loco-motion skills in virtual characters from a low dimensional latent space which captures the coordination between multiple joints. We use a technique called motor babble, wherein a character interacts with its environment by actuating its joints through uncoordinated, low-level (motor) excitation, resulting in a corpus of motion data from which a manifold latent space can be extracted. Using reinforcement learning, we then train the character to learn locomotion (such as walking or running) in the low-dimensional latent space instead of the full-dimensional joint action space. The thesis also presents an end-to-end automated framework for training physics-based characters to rhythmically dance to user-input songs. A generative adversarial network (GAN) architecture is proposed that learns to generate physically stable dance moves through repeated interactions with the environment. These moves are then used to construct a dance network that can be used for choreography. Using DRL, the character is then trained to perform these moves, without losing balance and rhythm, in the presence of physical forces such as gravity and friction

Advances in Human-Robot Interaction

Rapid advances in the field of robotics have made it possible to use robots not just in industrial automation but also in entertainment, rehabilitation, and home service. Since robots will likely affect many aspects of human existence, fundamental questions of human-robot interaction must be formulated and, if at all possible, resolved. Some of these questions are addressed in this collection of papers by leading HRI researchers

Performing Surfaces: Designing Research-creation for Agentive Embodiment

In this discussion I first outline material intersections of bodies and everyday objects that script habitual choreographies as affective extensions of the body. I then consider the dynamism of the shifts between habitual consciousness and non-consciousness as a site of agentive, embodied transformation within contexts of movement, multiples and sensory experience. I engage willfulness, stickiness, clumsiness and apparatuses of sensory notation as potential techniques for transforming consciousness and non-consciousness in habitual action. Finally, I invite readers to recreate the sensory dimensions of their own habitual experience by experimenting with some 'do it yourself ' exercises