Design fictions

This studio provides participants with an opportunity to engage in a hands-on exploration of the use of "design fictions" as a strategy for producing physical artifacts. The idea of design fictions blurs the boundaries between traditional design practices and narrative explorations of potential futures. If the goal of design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones, then the goal of design fiction is to use speculations, metaphors, and explorations of desired futurities to explicate and inform material design practices. Participants will have a chance to discuss these ideas, as well as to design and build their own "diegetic prototypes" out of materials sourced from local antique shops, thrift stores, and other nearby sources of inspiration. Through this hands-on exploration of the constraints and affordances of fictional scenarios and scavenged materials, we hope to collectively explore a compelling new design space for tangibles

Steampunk as Design Fiction

in this paper we look at the Steampunk movement and consider its relevance as a design strategy for HCI and interaction design. Based on a study of online practices of Steampunk, we consider how, as a design fiction, Steampunk provides an explicit model for how to physically realize an ideological and imagined world through design practice. We contend that the practices of DIY and appropriation that are evident in Steampunk design provide a useful set of design strategies and implications for HCI

A sustainable identity: The creativity of an everyday designer

In this paper we explore sustainability in interaction design by reframing concepts of user identity and use in a domestic setting. Building on our own work on everyday design and Blevis’s Sustainable Interaction Design principles, we present examples from an ethnographic study of families in their homes which illustrate design-in-use: the creative and sustainable ways people appropriate and adapt designed artifacts. We claim that adopting a conception of the user as a creative everyday designer generates a new set of design principles that promote sustainable interaction design

A case study of intended versus actual experience of adaptivity in a tangible storytelling system

This article presents a case study of an adaptive, tangible storytelling sys- temcalled “The ReadingGlove”. The research addresses a gap in the field of adaptivity for ubiquitous systems by taking a critical look at the notion of “adaptivity” and how users experience it. The Reading Glove is an interactive storytelling system featur- ing a wearable, glove-based interface and a set of narratively rich objects. A tabletop display provides adaptive recommendations which highlight objects to select next, functioning as an expert storytelling system. The recommendation engine can be run in three different configurations to examine the effects of different adaptive methods. The study of the design process as well as the user experience of the Reading Glove allows us to develop a deeper understanding of the experience of adaptivity that is use- ful for designers of intelligent systems, particularly those with ubiquitous and tangible forms of interaction

A report on participatory workshops for the design of adaptive collaborative learning

This “work-in-progress” paper discusses the process of conducting participatory workshops during the design of an adaptive, collaborative learning system. We outline our methods for exploring group interaction, collaboration, and learning in an iterative series workshops. We conclude with a discussion of how the results of these workshops have influenced our ongoing work in designing an adaptive system for family groups in the museum

Situating approaches to interactive museum guides

This paper examines the current state of museum guide technologies and applications in order to develop an analytical foundation for future research on an adaptive museum guide for families. The analysis focuses on three critical areas of interest in considering group and social interaction in museums: tangibility the role of tangible user interfaces; interaction visit types and visit flows; and adaptivity user modeling approaches. It concludes with a discussion of four interrelated trajectories for interactive museum guide research including embodied interaction, gameplay, transparent and opaque interaction and the role of personal digital assistants

Situating approaches to museum guides for families and groups

In this paper, we analyze the current state of museum guide technologies and applications in order to develop an analytical foundation for our future research in an adaptive museum guide for families. We have focused our analysis on three critical areas of interest in considering group and social interaction in museums: tangibility, the role of tangible user interfaces; interaction, visit types and visit flows; adaptivity, user modeling approaches

Kurio: A museum guide for families

We discuss three design strategies for improving the quality of social interaction and learning with interactive museum guides: 1) embodied interaction; 2) game-learning; 3) a hybrid system. We used these strategies in our prototype Kurio, which is aimed at supporting families visiting museums. The results of our evaluation show positive implications of implementing the design strategies: closing the social gap, naturalizing technology, and supporting exploration and discovery in learning

Almost All of Kepler's Multiple Planet Candidates are Planets

We present a statistical analysis that demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Kepler candidate multiple transiting systems (multis) indeed represent true, physically-associated transiting planets. Binary stars provide the primary source of false positives among Kepler planet candidates, implying that false positives should be nearly randomly-distributed among Kepler targets. In contrast, true transiting planets would appear clustered around a smaller number of Kepler targets if detectable planets tend to come in systems and/or if the orbital planes of planets encircling the same star are correlated. There are more than one hundred times as many Kepler planet candidates in multi-candidate systems as would be predicted from a random distribution of candidates, implying that the vast majority are true planets. Most of these multis are multiple planet systems orbiting the Kepler target star, but there are likely cases where (a) the planetary system orbits a fainter star, and the planets are thus significantly larger than has been estimated, or (b) the planets orbit different stars within a binary/multiple star system. We use the low overall false positive rate among Kepler multis, together with analysis of Kepler spacecraft and ground-based data, to validate the closely-packed Kepler-33 planetary system, which orbits a star that has evolved somewhat off of the main sequence. Kepler-33 hosts five transiting planets with periods ranging from 5.67 to 41 days.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure

Adaptivity in Ubiquitous Systems: An Experimental Study Adaptivity in Ubiquitous Systems: An Experimental Study

Abstract. In many projects it is assumed that adaptivity is a good thing, often without a solid reason for explaining why it would be desirable. We have built a ubiquitous tangible system to study how users respond to adaptive system and how they perceive different types of adaptivity. In this presentation we report the early study results