From Codes to Patterns: Designing Interactive Decoration for Tableware

ABSTRACT We explore the idea of making aesthetic decorative patterns that contain multiple visual codes. We chart an iterative collaboration with ceramic designers and a restaurant to refine a recognition technology to work reliably on ceramics, produce a pattern book of designs, and prototype sets of tableware and a mobile app to enhance a dining experience. We document how the designers learned to work with and creatively exploit the technology, enriching their patterns with embellishments and backgrounds and developing strategies for embedding codes into complex designs. We discuss the potential and challenges of interacting with such patterns. We argue for a transition from designing ‘codes to patterns’ that reflects the skills of designers alongside the development of new technologies

Customizing hybrid products

We explore how the convergence of the digital and physical into hybrid products leads to new possibilities for customization. We report on a technology probe, a hybrid advent calendar with both paper form and digital layers of content, both of which were designed to be customizable. We reveal how over two hundred active users adapted its physical and digital aspects in various ways, some anticipated and familiar, but others surprising. This leads us to contribute concepts to help understand and design for hybrid customization – the idea of broad customization spanning physical and digital; end-to-end customization by different stakeholders along the value chain for a product; and the combination of these into customization maps

GIFT:Hybrid Museum Experiences through Gifting and Play

he GIFT project develops new approaches to creating hybrid physi-cal-digital visitor experiences in museums. Through design exploration of two concepts focusing on gifting and playful appropriation, the project charts how museums can create a deeper and more meaningful experience by giving visitors the tools to tell their own stories. The project is highly cross-disciplinary com-bining HCI research, artist-led exploration, technology explorations, and experi-ence design in collaboration with museums. Furthermore, the project gathers 10 prominent museums from Europe and the US in an action research project that both serves to ground the prototypes and framework in the needs of museums, while also facilitating the museum sector's need to become 'digital-ready', under-standing and capitalising on digital technology. As the project has progressed through half of its duration, we report on initial findings and how these have shaped our direction of progress

Aestheticodes at Tent London

Public engagement, dissemination and hackathon. Visitors to Tent London were taught how to draw their own codes. These codes were used to trigger our demo app and then exhibited on the stand, which became a real time exhibition of public artwork that acted as a visual trigger code

The Artcodes App

The Artcodes app allows users to scan artcodes (on objects or surfaces) and view associated digital content on their mobile phone. It also allows users to debug artcode patterns they are creating themselves by seeing what the app is currently detecting. The major extension added to the Artcodes app as a result of this project is the ability for users to create their own experiences on the phone (by providing an experience name, description, image and assigning URLs to codes). Created experiences can then be made public and shared with other users

Interactive Illustrations

Living with Interactive Patterns EPSRC Research in the wild grant - £359,626 Collaborative Research project between University of Nottingham, Horizon Digital Economy Research, Central Saint Martins and Johnson Tiles, Busaba Eathai and Debbie Bryan shop Decorative patterns are an ever-present feature of our everyday world. From motifs and borders, to swathes of colour and texture, almost every 'thing' of value is embellished with a pattern that has been carefully designed to enhance its aesthetic, meaning and function. We aim to make such decorative patterns interactive so that all manner of everyday objects can become part of the Internet of Things simply by decorating their surfaces. Pointing a camera at a thing (or indeed pointing a thing at a camera) might then enable people to learn about what it is, how it was made, and how to use it; to access personal memories or review their history of use; or to trigger other contextually relevant services. Our proposal builds on a technology called Aestheticodes that we have already developed and demonstrated through a feasibility project. This enables designers and craftspeople to draw beautiful decorative patterns that contain computer-recognisable visual codes embedded within them. So far, we have implemented the technology to run on smartphones, worked with ceramic designers to produce an initial portfolio of fifteen patterns, and worked with the Busaba Eathai restaurant chain to apply these designs to plates, placemats and menus. These were then deployed in one of their restaurants to demonstrate an enhanced dining experience during London Design Week. This project will conduct an in the wild study of this technology actually being used in two complementary real world settings so as to learn how interactive decorative patterns can enhance everyday life, understand the challenges of interacting with patterns that contain embedded codes under testing real-world conditions, and establish ways of engaging designers and end-users in designing and reappropriating patterned objects and surfaces

Stakeholders’ perspectives on clinical trial acceptability and approach to consent within a limited timeframe: a mixed methods study

Objectives The Bronchiolitis Endotracheal Surfactant Study (BESS) is a randomised controlled trial to determine the efficacy of endo-tracheal surfactant therapy for critically ill infants with bronchiolitis. To explore acceptability of BESS, including approach to consent within a limited time frame, we explored parent and staff experiences of trial involvement in the first two bronchiolitis seasons to inform subsequent trial conduct.Design A mixed-method embedded study involving a site staff survey, questionnaires and interviews with parents approached about BESS.Setting Fourteen UK paediatric intensive care units.Participants Of the 179 parents of children approached to take part in BESS, 75 parents (of 69 children) took part in the embedded study. Of these, 55/69 (78%) completed a questionnaire, and 15/69 (21%) were interviewed. Thirty-eight staff completed a questionnaire.Results Parents and staff found the trial acceptable. All constructs of the Adapted Theoretical Framework of Acceptability were met. Parents viewed surfactant as being low risk and hoped their child’s participation would help others in the future. Although parents supported research without prior consent in studies of time critical interventions, they believed there was sufficient time to consider this trial. Parents recommended that prospective informed consent should continue to be sought for BESS. Many felt that the time between the consent process and intervention being administered took too long and should be ‘streamlined’ to avoid delays in administration of trial interventions. Staff described how the training and trial processes worked well, yet patients were missed due to lack of staff to deliver the intervention, particularly at weekends.Conclusion Parents and staff supported BESS trial and highlighted aspects of the protocol, which should be refined, including a streamlined informed consent process. Findings will be useful to inform proportionate approaches to consent in future paediatric trials where there is a short timeframe for consent discussions.Trial registration number ISRCTN11746266