Comic-based Digital Storytelling with Primary School Children

In this paper, we describe a pilot study of a digital storytelling project conducted with primary school children. The study investigates how comic-based storytelling supported by a digital tool, named Communics, can facilitate primary school children in creating stories and in reflecting on situations involving discrimination within the classroom context. In a first stage, two teachers have been involved to negotiate the intervention, as well as define graphical and textual content on which to base the narrations in Communics. In a second stage, we piloted an intervention within a class of 12 children to investigate the scaffolding opportunities offered by Communics as well as different aspects of storytelling, as engagement and motivation, and explore the use of the storytelling practice as a reflective process. Finally, we discuss preliminary insights and suggestions for future studies

Designing Wearables for Climbing: Integrating the Practice and the Experience Perspectives of Outdoor Adventure Sports

This thesis positions itself within the stream of research on HCI for sport and addresses the topic of designing wearable devices for sport. To date, the design of wearables for sport has focused on the measurable aspects of performance such as speed, heartbeat and calories burnt. Such design is driven by the possibilities offered by the miniaturisation of components and the trend to have a healthy lifestyle. The conjunction of these two trends, has created a breeding ground for technologies that offer self-tracking to improve personal fitness, health and wellbeing. Although these kinds of devices have great success on the market, several studies have shown poor long-term adoption, with people generally ceasing to use their devices around six months from the time of purchase. This thesis argues that the wearables produced until now do not address the full range of needs that sportspeople have and so aims to design wearables on the basis of a thorough understanding of the sport practice. The leading research question in this work was: what are the elements to consider for the design of useful, acceptable and desirable wearable devices for sport? This broad research question was then operationalised in two sub-questions: what elements constitute the sport practice?; and how can wearable devices support such practice? By adopting a practice perspective and a subsequent research methodology based on situatedness, embodiment, and co-design, it was possible to identify aspects of sport other than performance. Emotions, trust and community values emerged as pivotal aspects of the climbing experience. These findings led to the design of wearables for augmenting the interpersonal communication of the actors involved. This introduces a new role for wearables supporting sportspeople, which as a facilitator of expertise rather than a tracker of activity. The main contribution of this thesis is the articulation of a conceptual framework for the design of wearables for outdoor sports, with the goal of better acceptance and long-term adoption. The conceptual framework outlined here breaks down the complexity of the sport practice by identifying the elements that define it (i.e. type of performance, emotional involvement, social dynamics, physical context, values) and articulating their orchestration with product design aspects (such as ergonomics, comfort, and perceptibility) and the cultural value of wearing an artefact on the body

Designing Wearable Devices for Climbing: Integrating the Practice and the Experience Perspectives of Outdoor Adventure Sports

This thesis positions itself within the stream of research on HCI for sport and addresses the topic of designing wearable devices for sport. To date, the design of wearables for sport has focused on the measurable aspects of performance such as speed, heartbeat and calories burnt. Such design is driven by the possibilities offered by the miniaturisation of components and the trend to have a healthy lifestyle. The conjunction of these two trends, has created a breeding ground for technologies that offer self-tracking to improve personal fitness, health and wellbeing. Although these kinds of devices have great success on the market, several studies have shown poor long-term adoption, with people generally ceasing to use their devices around six months from the time of purchase. This thesis argues that the wearables produced until now do not address the full range of needs that sportspeople have and so aims to design wearables on the basis of a thorough understanding of the sport practice. The leading research question in this work was: what are the elements to consider for the design of useful, acceptable and desirable wearable devices for sport? This broad research question was then operationalised in two sub-questions: what elements constitute the sport practice?; and how can wearable devices support such practice? By adopting a practice perspective and a subsequent research methodology based on situatedness, embodiment, and co-design, it was possible to identify aspects of sport other than performance. Emotions, trust and community values emerged as pivotal aspects of the climbing experience. These findings led to the design of wearables for augmenting the interpersonal communication of the actors involved. This introduces a new role for wearables supporting sportspeople, which as a facilitator of expertise rather than a tracker of activity. The main contribution of this thesis is the articulation of a conceptual framework for the design of wearables for outdoor sports, with the goal of better acceptance and long-term adoption. The conceptual framework outlined here breaks down the complexity of the sport practice by identifying the elements that define it (i.e. type of performance, emotional involvement, social dynamics, physical context, values) and articulating their orchestration with product design aspects (such as ergonomics, comfort, and perceptibility) and the cultural value of wearing an artefact on the body

Becoming a Speleologist: Design Implications for Coordination in Wild Outdoor Environments

Learning outdoor sports entails acquiring physical skills, managing gear, and coordinating with others. We investigated how speleologists are trained to explore underground caves. We interviewed 15 instructors and 10 trainees to understand the main problems that may occur during training cave trips. Our findings show that stressful situations are linked to beginners’ difficulties applying new gestures and procedures - on which their progression and safety depend - and coordinating with others when they are out of sight. It emerged that group awareness and communication are pivotal for their tranquility. Yet, the underground environment makes communicating very hard. This study led to the elaboration of design implications for technology supporting awareness, communication, and coordination in speleology training, which draw from and enrich previous literature on coordination in the wild, as it may happen while performing outdoor sports or during search-and-rescue operations

An Investigation on Acceptance and Rejection of Public Displays in a Knowledge Company

reserved3noA field study on the dynamics of acceptance and rejection of public displays in a knowledge work environment is presented. This study has been conducted on the premises of a research center that employs more than 400 people. We report the motivations for the deployment of a public display infrastructure by the Communication Office, and present the results of the field study conducted 18 months after the initial installations. The results showed that there were several limitations for addressing the information needs of employees through the public displays. The main reasons being they were not properly situated in the everyday lifecycle of the institute, and the visual layout was somehow confusing and often ineffective. However, one of the main design goals was the address the need to propose a new corporate identity after a recent company restructuring. This was communicated more effectively even if not generally accepted. Starting from these results, we proposed two main design strategies to make the deployment of public display systems more effective in terms of perceived usefulness and acceptance: (1) seamless integration of the public display into the everyday life of the community and (2) active involvement of the members of the community in the creation and diffusion of content.E. Mencarini; L. Giusti; M. ZancanaroMencarini, Eleonora; Giusti, Leonardo; Zancanaro, Massim

Emotions in climbing: A design opportunity for haptic communication

This paper presents the results of 11 interviews to beginner climbers aimed at investigating the role of emotions in learning climbing. Climbing is an extreme sport becoming increasingly popular thanks to a higher safety and to the spread of indoor gyms. Although the evolution of this sport from alpinism to indoor practice has made it accessible to all, the emotional involvement that it entails has remained. Our findings suggest that there can be a space for the design of technologies that help managing negative emotions by augmenting the communication between climbing partners with haptic feedback

Designing Wearable Systems for Sports: A Review of Trends and Opportunities in Human–Computer Interaction

This paper presents a literature review of human–computer interaction works on wearable systems for sports. We selected a corpus of 57 papers and analyzed them through the grounded theory for literature review approach. We identified five themes across the papers: the different research perspectives, the type of sports and sportspeople, the roles of wearables in sports, their wearability, and the different types of feedback. These themes helped us in delineating opportunities for future research: the investigation of different form factors and types of feedback; the consideration of different sportspeople and collaborative tasks; the need of pushing the boundaries of the sports domain; the exploration of the evolution of sports; the interconnection of different devices; and the increase of methodological rigor

Soil, Rock, and Snow: On Designing for Information Sharing in Outdoor Sports

While outdoor sport activities keep gaining popularity as part of a global trend to maintain a healthier lifestyle, current technology offers limited support for activity-specific needs. Therefore, a greater understanding of information sharing behaviours is necessary in order to build comprehensive, socially-embedded sports applications. To this purpose, we interviewed 46 practitioners in three outdoor sports: trail running, climbing, and skiing. Our qualitative study investigates how participants share information in the context of outdoor sports and how current technology supports this practice. Through thematic analysis, we derived five themes that describe the current information sharing practices: nature, risk and planning, content selection, audience selection, and privacy. Based on these themes, we present five recommendations for design that can inform, inspire and refine future sharing technologies for outdoor sport

Paper Pocket Pets - Making Wearable Interactive Toys

We present Paper Pocket Pets, an approach to create personal interactive toys that children can carry along with them. Creating Paper Pocket Pets involves four activities that combine traditional crafts with digital fabrication: paper folding to create a pet; fabrication of the pet's shelter (a platform where the pet lives on); fabrication of the pet's electric components; and programming the pet's behavior. We invite the FabLearn audience to create their own pets and explore these activities during the demo at the conference