How might alternative encounters with personal hiking data support practices of noticing nature as well as changes in one's self over time? To investigate this question, we conducted a multi-year first person study with Capra—a system that combines the collection and exploration of hiking experiences in nature with an emphasis on longer-term, occasional yet indefinite use. Over several years, three researchers that represented different hiking frequencies, paces, locations, and life stages concurrently and independently hiked, used, and lived with Capra. Findings revealed unique individual and collective changes in attitude among the team, from an initial interest in intentionally capturing specific natural phenomena towards a shift in attentiveness when re-exploring hikes as well as when hiking outdoors. It is these insights that emerged through our long-term experiences with Capra that we present and reflect on in this paper.

As the practice of hiking becomes captured through personal data, it is timely to consider how technology might support noticing and connecting to nature as well as one's self over time. Capra is a system we designed that brings together the capture, storage, and exploration of personal hiking data with an emphasis on longer-term use. In this pictorial, we unpack our process of making a short film that aims to communicate the workings and experience of Capra to a broader audience. We encountered frictions in mobilizing key theoretical concepts framing Capra as a Research through Design (RtD) artifact in the making of our film. We reflect on tactics for working through such frictions, how they can support future work, and how the filmmaking process can offer a valuable approach for distributing RtD artifacts to broader audiences.

As the practice of hiking becomes increasingly captured through personal data, it is timely to consider what kinds of alternative data encounters might support forms of noticing and connecting to nature as well as one's self and life history over time. To investigate this emerging design space, we designed Capra — a system that brings together the capture, storage, and exploration of personal hiking data with an emphasis on longer-term, occasional yet indefinite use. Over four years, our team adopted a designer-researcher approach where we progressively designed, built, refined, and tested Capra. This process produced frictions in terms of balancing unobtrusiveness, transforming hiking data into evolving interconnected elements in the archive, and managing the sheer quantity and diversity of information with our goal of supporting open-ended and ongoing engagements. It is these insights that emerged through the practice-based design research approach involved in creating Capra that we reflect on in this paper.

With the massive adoption of smartphones, location trackers, and GPS-based applications, data is being generated that captures people's geographic locations in more precise detail than ever before. Personal location history archives offer a potentially valuable and overlooked resource for supporting reminiscence and recollection of the past. Yet, little design research has explored how location histories can be used as a material in designing such experiences. To investigate this space, we engaged in a practice-based design research process that resulted in two design artifacts. Memory Tracer is a tangible device that occasionally, yet perpetually surfaces locations from the past bound to today's date. Memory Compass is a smartwatch application that uses a ‘casting’ interaction enabling a user to retrieve and explore locations from their past, across space and time. We unpack and reflect on key decisions in our design process and conclude with opportunities for future HCI research and practice.

This paper presents a long-term field study of the coMorphing stool: a computational thing that can change shape in response to the surrounding light. We deployed 5 coMorphing stools to 5 participants' homes over 9 months. As co-speculators, the participants reflected on their mediated relations with the coMorphing stool. Findings suggest that they perceived the subtle transformations of the coMorphing stool in the early days of the deployment. After becoming familiar with these features, they interpreted their daily entanglements with the coMorphing stool in diverse personalized ways. Over time, the co-speculators accepted the coMorphing stool as part of their homes. These findings contribute new empirical insights to the shape-changing research field in HCI and enrich discussions on higher-level concepts in postphenomenology. Reflecting on these experiences promotes further HCI explorations on computational things.