Felted Terrain: Interactive Textile Landscape; Transforming the Experience of Knitted Textile with Computation and Soft Electronics

This paper presents Felted Terrain, an interactive textile with embedded soft electronics, that creates a sensorial experience with tactility, sound, and esthetics. The project takes the traditional craft of knitting and applies computation at different points of processes, from pattern generation with parametric scripting to integration of conductive and flexible electronics for creating user interactivity. With digital design and fabrication tools, the sensor-embedded textile is produced to be experienced at the spatial level of the interior. The paper discusses the design processes of the project and the potentials of embedding unexpected interactivity to the everyday object of the knitted fabric to provide opportunities for multi-sensorial experiences

ReActive: Exploring Hybrid Interactive Materials in Craftsmanship

This paper presents ReActive, a design exploration aimed at embedding interactivity in traditional materials by artisanal processes. In the attempt to reconciling technology with human experience and tradition, we experimented with artisans to understand how craftsmanship can embrace technological innovations while at the same time maintaining its nature and value. We built samples of hybrid materials, where electronics and smart materials are embedded in traditional ones, in order to make them reactive and interactive. We discuss implications and new possibilities offered by these new hybrid materials both for artisans and users and new perspectives for interaction design

Slow urban living apartments : transformation of five story walk-up apartments in Seoul

Thesis: M. Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2014.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (page 115).Experiential living is the new trend for future living. Whether it is through living in micro spaces, flexible units, mixed-use developments, practicing urban farming, or sharing lifestyles, these different trends of living intersects at the overlapping theme of experiential living. At the same time, Seoul is facing a final wave of 'retirement age' of the first generation of post-war urban housing apartments. Instead of the typical scrap-and-build urban renewal method (the culprit of the formation of 'apartment city', with over 60% of housing stock as apartments), is there an alternate method of urban redevelopment? This thesis investigates idea of small-scale urban renewal by integrating the idea of 'experiential slow living' in the existing low-rise, enclosed apartment community. Can this idea of transforming the ground level experience with slow food (productive landscapes) and slow craft (mixed-use living and shared spaces) become the alternative model for urban renewal that can be practiced throughout the city of apartments?by Yihyun Lim.M. Arch

Exploring Gesture-Based Tangible Interactions with a Lighting AI Agent

The paper explores a gestural and visual language to interact with an Artificial Intelligent agent controlling connected lighting systems. Six interaction modalities (four gestural and two visual) were designed and tested with users in order to collect feedback on their intuitiveness, comfort and engagement level. A comparison between traditional voice-based interaction modalities with AI and the proposed gesture-based language was performed. Preliminary results are discussed, including the importance of cognitive metaphors in gesture-based interaction, the relation between intuitiveness, innovation, and engagement, and the advantages provided by gesture-based interactions in terms of privacy, subtleness, and pleasantness, versus the limited options and the need to learn a codified language. Insights will help designers in the development of seamless interactions with AI agents for ambient intelligent systems

Designing for Ambient UX: Case Study of a Dynamic Lighting System for a Work Space

The research aims at proposing and validating a framework supporting the design of user experience in interactive spaces (Ambient UX). It suggests that dynamic changes in interactive spaces should be designed focusing on their effects on three levels of the user experience: physical wellbeing, meanings, and social relations. Validation occurred through a field study performed in a work environment, where a dynamic lighting system was designed and installed. Preliminary results validate the relevance of the three levels, thus laying the ground for further research and discussion

Robot Citizenship: A Design Perspective

This paper suggests robot citizenship as a design perspective for attending to the sociality of human robot interactions (HRI) in the near future. First, we review current positions regarding robot citizenship, which we summarise as: human analogy, nonhuman analogy and socio-relationality. Based on this review, we then suggest an understanding of citizenship that stresses the socio-relational implications of the concept, and in particular its potential for rethinking the way we approach the design of robots in practice. We suggest that designing for robot citizenship (in the terms suggested by this paper) has the potential of fostering a shift from a logic of functionality to one of relationality. To illuminate the direction of this shift in design practice, we include and discuss three robot concepts designed to address and rethink present HRI challenges in the urban environment from a relational perspective

Envisioning and Questioning Near Future Urban Robotics

Robotic services, which have started to appear in urban environments, are going to transform our society. Designers of these robots are not only required to meet technical and legal challenges, but also address the potential social, political, and ethical consequences of their design choices. In this paper, we present a workshop format with its related tools intended for enabling speculation about such possible futures and fostering reflection on potential socio-ethical implications that might support/oppose these futures. We report the results and discussion of one particular workshop case, in which the implementation of two particular robotic services for a city was envisioned and questioned, i.e., surveillance and delivery of goods. By discussing the results, we illustrate how such a workshop format might be beneficial for setting the agenda for a more conscious design of urban robots and orienting future research towards meaningful themes related to the emerging coexistence scenarios between citizens and robots