Høbye, M. (2012). Mediated Body: Designing for embodied experience. ACM Computers in Entertainment Video Article, http://cie.acm.org/articles/mediated-body-designing-embodied-experience/, accessed May 7, 2012.

This video article, published in the Video Journal section of ACM’s Computers in Entertainment (read more about the Video Journal), discusses the experiential qualities of the Mediated Body concept developed by PhD student Mads Høbye.

Mediated Body from ACM Computers in Entertainment on Vimeo.

EXCERPT
Mediated Body is a symbiotic system consisting of a human (the Performer) wearing custom-built technology (the Suit). The system offers a play session to a single Participant at a time. The role of the technology is to sense physical bare-skin connection between the Performer and the Participant, where the sensing yields analogue values in a range starting from a few centimeters from actual touch, via light touch, to full contact. The values are converted into a relatively complex soundscape which is played back in the headphones that both the Performer and the Participant wear. Thus, from the Participant’s point of view, the Performer is a human theremin: a musical instrument that she can play by touching. However, due to the design of the system, the instrument can also play its player: When the Performer touches the Participant, the soundscape is affected in the same way.

View the full video article.

Related publications
- Touchbox: Intriguing touch between strangers
- Touching a Stranger: Designing for Engaging Experience in Embodied Interaction

Nilsson, Elisabet M. (2011). The making of a maker-space for open innovation, knowledge sharing, and peer-to-peer learning. In Sonvilla-Weiss, S. & Owen, K. (Eds.) Future Learning Spaces: Designs on ELearning Conference Proceedings, pp 293-298, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland.

ABSTRACT
This short paper presents the initial steps in the establishment of Fabriken (the Factory) which is an open maker-space, and lab space for creating and experimenting with technologies. The space also provides a platform for peer-to-peer learning, and networked learning that goes on beyond the physical walls of the lab space. From a research perspective the development of Fabriken is a research intervention exploring how platforms for learning and innovation can be co-designed, and established in collaboration with the users. The aim of this paper is to present strategies behind this co-design process. To position Fabriken in a societal and cultural context some words are also said about the theoretical assumptions guiding this work, that is, socio-cultural theories on human action and learning.

Keywords: maker-space, open lab, peer-to-peer learning, co-design, socio-cultural theories, social and technological innovation, co-production

Related publications
- Building Fabriken: Design for Socially Shaped Innovation
- Democratizing production: challenges in co-designing enabling platforms for social innovation
- Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation

Seravalli, A. (forthcoming). Building Fabriken, Design for Socially Shaped Innovation. To be presented at Design Research Society International Conference Bangkok, 1-4, July 2012.

Abstract
Recently, there has been a growing attention to innovation processes based on the involvement of diverse actors in co-creation activities. A new innovation model is evolving, relying on collaboration, openness and participation as drivers for the development of novelty in diverse fields. This model has a central role in social innovation, which is claimed to arise from collaborations across various sectors and social structures. In trying to understand how innovation arises in co-creation processes, this paper relies on the idea of socially shaped innovation, according to which novelty emerges from local interactions through tensions and argumentation.

In exploring how design could support socially shaped innovation, the paper discusses the experience of designing Fabriken, a socially shaped infrastructure for socially shaped innovation. Particularly, the focus is on the design process and on the shift from a design-in the-studio strategy, based on a funnel model, to a design-in-use strategy, where some participatory tactics such as prototyping, small-scale interventions and long-term engagement are used by diverse stakeholders to explore the design space.

Keywords: Socially shaped innovation; collaborative, open and democratic innovation; Design-in-use; Prototyping; Small-scale interventions; Long-term engagement

Article excerpt: Fabriken, a socially shaped infrastructure for socially shaped innovation?

Eight months after the opening, some considerations can be made about social shaping at Fabriken.

Collaborative networks are emerging, involving not only Fabriken, but also the whole premises. While people are sewing, soldering and laser-cutting in the basement, STPLN is hosting events and managing a co-working facility at the ground level, using the same collaborative, open and democratic approach that drives Fabriken. Users are moving from one space to the other, developing alliances and taking advantage of all the possibilities.

One of these users is Carin, a former teacher, who contacted Fabriken to get support for starting her project. Her idea is to create a space where children can develop their creativity and environmental awareness by playing with cast-off materials from manufacturing processes. Fabriken is supporting Carin’s project in different ways: On the one side, it provides her access to a workshop where she can experiment with materials and do activities with children. On the other side, it allows her, by being in the space, to become part of Fabriken’s network and to get to know possible partners.

In terms of the broader innovation discourse, Fabriken also works as a space for technological experimentations. Forskningavdelningen’s members have been involved in the creation of several different prototypes of robots, software applications and hardware boards; some of these experiments have been commercialized. A number of users use the facilities as a support for their start-ups: Quinn has started a catering company using the premises’ kitchen. Rebecka, a fashion designer, has also recently founded her own company and is using Tantverket as her atelier.

Beside users coming to the space for setting up a small company or exploring the possibilities of technologies and machines, there are also participants who have been unemployed or on sick leave for a long time. In this sense, Fabriken counts in the social innovation discourse, but in a way that we never expected.

From these outcomes, it seems that the Fabriken experience can bring a contribution to the general discourse of collaborative, open and democratic innovation. In fact, the phenomena appearing in the space seem to indicate that novelty emerging from social shaping is manifold since it simultaneously involves diverse dimensions, from technological to social ones, from economical to organizational ones.

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Building Fabriken, Design for Socially Shaped Innovation by Anna Seravalli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Kozel, S. (2010). Mobile social choreographies: Choreographic insight as a basis for artistic research into mobile technologies. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 6:2, pp. 137–148, doi: 10.1386/padm.6.2.137_1

Abstract
Creative use of networked wireless communications devices (such as mobile phones) contributes to a vibrant strand of media art called locative media, and has captured the imaginations of geographers, media artists, architects, engineers and philosophers. Now it is time for dancers and choreographers to contribute to the critical and creative activity around corporeality, expression and mobile technologies in social contexts. This article proposes an emergent area of research in combining dance and mobile technologies called social choreographies, and considers artistic research methodologies relevant to this newly framed domain that are rooted in improvisatory studio practices and drawing a choreographic sensibility into urban environments.

This is a pre-print version, published with the author’s consent in the interest of open dissemination, but somewhat different from the final, archival version of the article. Do not cite this version without permission from the author; the archival version is published as: Kozel, S. (2010). Mobile social choreographies: Choreographic insight as a basis for artistic research into mobile technologies. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 6:2, pp. 137–148. DOI:10.1386/padm.6.2.137_1

Image credit: Flickr user smokeghost CC:BY-NC

Related projects
- AffeXity: Geospatial tagging using AR browser Argon
- Alone or Not: Kinaesthetic social networking
- Social Choreographies: Enhancing the embodied quality of our mobile lives

Löwgren, J., Reimer, B. (forthcoming). Designing collaborative media: A challenge for CHI? To be presented at CHI 2012.

Abstract
Collaborative media refers to digital media where people outside the traditional media industries participate in production as well as infrastructural design. We argue that (1) people’s use of computers today increasingly comprise communicating in collaborative media, and that (2) designing collaborative media implies fundamental changes to design processes and designer roles, which in turn (3) forms a challenge to the proactive position of the CHI community in shaping future computer use.

Keywords: collaborative media; designing collaborative media

Other articles published by Medea researchers at CHI 2012 and alt.chi 2012 are Mads Høbye’s Touchbox: Intriguing touch between strangers and Pelle Ehn’s and Per Linde’s et al What is the Object of Design?

Article excerpt: CHI and collaborative media
The broad categories of computer-as-tool and computer-as-medium have been with us for a very long time. Arguably, it would be fair to say that interaction design as an academic discipline, as well as the CHI community, emanate from an intellectual tradition of concentrating mainly on the computer as a tool (but certainly including all manners of stationary, mobile, embedded and ubiquitous digital devices in the notion of “computer”). More recent developments have included a turn towards experience and non-instrumental aspects of computer use, and lately a growing body of studies on uses of “social media.”

In our view, however, a more serious challenge is starting to form for the CHI community. The way we see it, people’s use of computers today increasingly consists of communicating in collaborative media. If the CHI community wants to stay proactive in the sense of shaping the futures of computer use, then the issue of designing collaborative media will have to come to the fore. Our own work represents examples of interaction designers and media scholars experimenting with collaborative media in a research setting: What collaborative media practices and platforms could we envision, what would their properties and qualities be, and what would be the role of collaborative media designers? We feel that some of what we have learnt about designing collaborative media could be valuable to the CHI community.

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Related articles
The concepts explored in this article are to be published in the MIT Press book Collaborative Media in 2013, along with several journal articles that are in the pipeline.

Copyright notice
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. CHI’12, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA. Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1016-1/12/05…$10.00.

Binder, T., Jacucci, G., De Michelis, G., Linde, P., Ehn, P., Wagner, I. (forthcoming). What is the Object of Design? To be presented at CHI 2012.

Abstract
In this paper we reflect upon design at a conceptual level, discussing how creativity can be coupled with participation and experience, dialoguing with philosophers and social theorists, and looking for the experiential grounds of our understanding of the very nature of design. Three words: ‘drawing’, ‘thing’ and ‘together’, are at the center of our discourse. We propose a view of design as accessing, aligning, and navigating among the “constituents” of the object of design. People interact with the object of design through its constituents. The object of design is to draw things together.

Keywords: Interaction design; drawing; thing; object; together; design theory; design process; design practice;

Other articles published by Medea researchers at CHI 2012 and alt.chi 2012 are Jonas Löwgren’s and Bo Reimer’s Designing Collaborative Media: A Challenge for CHI? and Mads Høbye’s Touchbox: Intriguing touch between strangers.

Article excerpt: Controversial Things
In our approach to drawing things together the philosophical pragmatism of John Dewey and the ‘thing politics’ of Bruno Latour has been corner stones for reflecting upon design as participation in collectives of humans and non-humans.

Dewey’s position on controversial things and the public makes the project of drawing things together even more challenging. He argued that in fact the public is characterized by heterogeneity and conflict. It may be challenging enough to design for, by and together with collectives of humans and non humans where common social objectives are already established, institutionalized or at least within reasonable reach, where socio-material things are supported by relatively stable infrastructures. But the really demanding challenge is to design where no such thing seems to be within immediate reach, where no social community exists. In short, where a political community, a public characterized by heterogeneity and difference with no shared object of design, is in need of a platform or infrastructure. Not necessary to solve conflict, but to constructively deal with disagreements – public controversies where heterogeneous design things can unfold and actors engage in alignments of their conflicting objects of design. Participation in the making of such things, and the relation between professional design and design activism, stands out as the ultimate challenge when we gather and collaborate in and around design things. This we believe is a major challenge also to design thinking in general as well as to more specific participative and user-centered approaches to drawing things together.

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Related articles
The concepts explored in this article are also discussed in the book Design Things, published by MIT Press; in the article Design Things: Drawing Things Together and Making Things Public by Pelle Ehn and in the PDC paper Participation in Design Things.

Copyright notice
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. CHI’12, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA. Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1016-1/12/05…$10.00.

Høbye, M. (forthcoming). Touchbox: Intriguing touch between strangers. To be presented at CHI 2012.

Abstract
The Touchbox is about facilitating intriguing touch interaction between strangers. The Participants each wear a pair of headphones, and when they touch each others bare skin, they both hear a complex sound pattern. Previous (successful) work involved a skilled Performer and one Participant; the Touchbox was designed to be played by pairs of pristine Participants exploring the interaction situation on their own. It turned out that their interaction experiences were quite engaging albeit more varied in mood and character. The Touchbox illustrates a novel approach to embodied interaction design where social norms are transcended by means of daring and captivating interactions.

Keywords: Social play, pushing norms, interactive sound, embodied interaction, bare-skin touch.

Other articles published by Medea researchers at CHI 2012 and alt.chi 2012 are Jonas Löwgren’s and Bo Reimer’s Designing Collaborative Media: A Challenge for CHI? and Pelle Ehn’s and Per Linde’s et al What is the Object of Design?

Touchbox: Copenhagen 2011 from Mads Hobye on Vimeo.

Article summary
The first thing you see is a strange-looking wooden box with a vintage light bulb and an analogue meter. It looks like a quasi-scientific instrument from the 60s that will measure your health and serve to convince you to buy snake oil or to join a cult. This appearance was designed to spark your curiosity and set you in a mood for exploring the system.

The Touchbox is about facilitating intriguing touch interaction between strangers. The Participants each wear a pair of headphones, and when they touch each others bare skin, they both hear a complex sound pattern. Previous (successful) work involved a skilled Performer and one Participant; the Touchbox was designed to be played by pairs of pristine Participants exploring the interaction situation on their own. It turned out that their interaction experiences were quite engaging albeit more varied in mood and character. The Touchbox illustrates a novel approach to embodied interaction design where social norms are transcended by means of daring and captivating interactions.

The Touchbox system offers a play session for two Participants at a time. The role of the technology is to sense physical bare-skin connection between the Participants where the sensing yields analogue values in a range starting from a few centimeters from actual touch (what I refer to as the aura), via light touch, to full contact. The values are converted into a relatively complex soundscape which is played back to each Participant through their headphones. The headphones make the interactive soundscape a privately shared experience between the Participants by limiting surrounding sounds.

The analogue nature of skin touch sensing, and relatively complex functional relations between input and output, together form an open and ambiguous interaction surface for the Participants, encouraging them to explore the soundscape together and serving as an excuse to sidestep normal conventions in physical touch between strangers.

Most importantly, the Touchbox showed that it is possible for two pristine Participants to get an engaging experience together in a manner similar to how a Performer knowing the system would play it with a Participant.

However, it must be noted that the role of the Performer was not completely out of the equation. The Participants needed to be introduced to the system in a way that also set the mood of the experience they were going to have. To this end, Participants who tried the Touchbox for the second time tended to take on the role of a guide, showing their partners different ways of playing, and the more subtle nuances of touching in the air.

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Related articles
The concepts explored in this article are also discussed in the article Touching a Stranger: Designing for Engaging Experience in Embodied Interaction, published in the International Journal of Design.

Copyright notice
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, TX, USA. ACM 978-1-4503-1016-1/12/05.

Eriksson, E.; Ljungstrand, P; Lykke-Olesen, A; Cuartielles, D. (2011). Missing Link: Designing for Dependency. In Proceedings of the 4th Nordic Design Research Conferences, Making Design Matter, Helsinki, Finland, p. 206-209.

Abstract
In this paper, we investigate aspects of interaction design related to the appearance and context of dual-natured design objects, meaning artefacts with physical form and digital behaviour. In interaction design of today there is a focus on isolated artefacts/objects, but does not involve the context in the sense that it is a vital part of its design and expression. We argue for interaction designers to take respect to the dependency of computational design objects to their context in greater extent. We would like to ask interaction designers to look at their work as part of a whole, where their creations will influence / be influenced by the rest. A workshop method named ‘Missing Link’ used in teaching is proposed here. The workshop confronts questions on how to give up control of your design and at the same time in a creative way exploit the available rules of the bigger system.

Published in:
Proceedings of the 4th Nordic Design Research Conferences, Making Design Matter, Helsinki, Finland, p. 206-209.

Read more
- The Missing Link website and documentation

Høbye, M., & Löwgren, J. (2011). Touching a stranger: Designing for engaging experience in embodied interaction. International Journal of Design, 5(3), 31-48.

Abstract
We present Mediated Body, an exploration into designing for engaging experience in embodied interaction. Mediated Body entails a Suit worn by a Performer engaging in social play with a Participant. The Performer and the Participant each wear a pair of headphones, and when they touch each other’s bare skin, they both hear a complex sound pattern. Our approach, which we call research-through-explorative-design, is a combination of experimental design in the lab and explorative design in the field, where qualitative assessments are used to elicit transferable knowledge contributions. This paper represents a case study of this somewhat innovative research approach in action. On the topical level, our results include three artifact-level elements that contribute to engaging experience: connecting touch and audio with the right balance between direct and emergent responsivity, justifying bare-skin touch between strangers, and providing open-ended action props with non-trivial internal complexity. Moreover, we suggest three experiential qualities as analytical tools pertaining to engaging experience in embodied interaction: the duality of performative immersion, the “magic circle” of transformative social play, and the explorative nature of emergent meaning-making.

Keywords: Embodied Interaction, Engaging Experience, Research Through Explorative Design.

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Copyright: © 2011 Hobye & Löwgren. Copyright for this article is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the International Journal of Design. All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. By virtue of their appearance in this open-access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.

Image credit: Mads Høbye.

Hillgren, Per-Anders; Seravalli, Anna & Emilson, Anders. (2011). Prototyping and Infrastructuring in design for social innovation. Co-Design Vol. 7, Nos. 3–4, September–December 2011, 169–183.

Abstract
During the past five years design has been recognised as a powerful innovation driver. Design methods and tools have also been applied in new fields. One of them is social innovation, which is aimed at developing new ideas and solutions in response to social needs. While different initiatives have demonstrated how design can be a powerful approach in social innovation, especially when it comes to systemic thinking, prototyping and visualising, some concerns have been raised regarding the limitations of applying design in this field. Through a specific case, this paper will discuss and suggest some approaches and concepts related to design for social innovation. Coming from a participatory design tradition, we focus on the idea of infrastructuring as a way to approach social innovation that differs from project-based design. The activities that are carried out are aimed at building long-term relationships with stakeholders in order to create networks from which design opportunities can emerge. We also discuss the role of prototyping as a way to explore opportunities but we also highlight dilemmas.

This is a pre-print version, published with the authors’ consent in the interest of open dissemination, but somewhat different from the final, archival version of the article. Do not cite this version without permission from the authors; the archival version is published as: Hillgren, Per-Anders; Seravalli, Anna & Emilson, Anders. (2011) Prototyping and Infrastructuring in design for social innovation. Co-Design Vol. 7, Nos. 3–4, September–December 2011, 169–183.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2011.630474

Image credit: jvoves CC:BY-NC-SA

The ePub version of this article was made with open-source software Calibre.