This paper describes the interactive artwork “Between This and That is It”: An AI-augmented typewriter that blends several decades of computerized optimization of text production. The artwork employs an offline processing machine learning-based language model embedded in a typical office typewriter from the 1980s. Deliberately diverting from the pervasive conversational user interface, the interaction style is based on a well-defined minimalist pattern of complementing two user-supplied words with a third word that – in the model – lies in the middle of the other two. This constraint interaction invites to explore the limits of the semantic space of language models and poses questions related to the topology of meaning, with respect to truthfulness, biases, and cliches, by creating a semi-intelligent poetic co-performance involving the audience. This project seeks to foster a discussion on the creative collaboration between humans and AI within the constraints of machine learning technologies embedded into objects from the near past. The experience and the perception of the interaction are shaped by a hybrid space shared between the audience members and the AI, the mechanical limitations of the typewriter, the embedded mini-computer’s computational capacity, and the language model itself.

In design, we often deal with complex problems that require participatory, embodied sensemaking to solve. There are abundant design tools available – both physical and digital – to support these activities. While digital tools have continued to gain presence in the design processes over the last decades, due to, e.g., widened availability, improved flexibility, and the potential to increase productivity, physical tools and analogue practices still hold a solid place in the design process for many designers. To bridge the gap between the physical and digital, and to benefit from the best of both worlds in tools for design, hybrid tools are being developed. This paper aims to identify design opportunities for future hybrid design tools, by exploring the characteristics of designing for participatory, embodied sensemaking, in the context of physical, digital, and hybrid tools.

Audio-frequency induction loops (AFILs) are commonly used as an assistive listening technology for hard-of-hearing individuals. They generate an electromagnetic field proportional to a sound source receivable by hearing aids. Our interactive system, the Sound of Space, is based on AFILs that generate a multi-dimensional soundscape in space. Cochlear implant (CI) listeners and hearing-aids wearers can experience the soundscape through bodily movement, whereas hearing individuals can experience it via a corresponding tangible device. While typical AFIL installations transmit a single sound source, in our interactive system we implement overlapping loops and their interference to locate multiple synchronised audio sources (i.e., corresponding electromagnetic fields) in space. The designed system is installed permanently in an integrative school for deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing students and teachers. In this pictorial, we illustrate our design and implementation process and contribute our learnings of using AFILs as a design material for architectural interactivity.

Large-scale kinetic displays have been present for decades, both as mesmerising art installations and as information displays. In this paper we present KINEIN, a kinetic display whose large-scale and indefinite deployment time distinguish it from the prototypical level of HCI research artefacts. It consists of 625 “tiles” or “pixels” mounted on a 25 x 25 matrix and operates through mechanical movement. Instead of a motor rotating each tile individually, KINEIN has a vertical column system that moves tiles sequentially. Situated at the entrance of a learning environment, KINEIN is not only a playful artefact for children to physically interact with, but also the first encounter for the school's visitors.

Games are a great objective for research on tangible and embodied interaction as they not only have a long tradition in both the analogue and the digital game domain; they also perfectly represent the tangible and the embodiment through the nature of game play. In this Studio, we will go beyond the analogue characteristics of board games, not just by adding a visual digital layer, but by examining new game play mechanics for board games through digital technology. We will do this by introducing a new role in board games as an immersed 'character' in the game. For this, we use a very specific technology (virtual reality live streaming from a miniature perspective) as a new lens on (existing) board games. Through experimentation with and exploration of existing board games through this new lens, we will conceptualize and prototype game play mechanics for this new notion of game participation.

This pictorial explores the material resources that can unfold through taking things apart. We describe a workshop program and according exercises designed around four particular modes of disassembling (interactive) artefacts. These exercises aim to provide low-threshold engagements with artefacts and the materials those artefacts are composed of. Based on a series of workshops we conducted following this program, we depict nine different forms of material resources that are unveiled through taking things apart. With this distinction we aim to contribute to the understanding of how the material histories of components and the rules that were governing their previous relations, are carried over to new compositions during reuse or reinterpretation.

Traditionally, architects and designers have used scale models to explore, communicate, and evaluate concepts and ideas in large-scale, spatial projects. These scale models offer the user a bird's eye perspective and often tangible ways of interacting with the model. Nevertheless, they lack a realistic, first-person view on the effects that the design solutions have in the space. In this paper, we explore MacroScope, a tool that aims to support collaborative spatial design by providing a real time, 360o first-person perspective in a physical scale model, by means of a virtual reality head-mounted display. We reflect on the usage potentials in collaborative creative processes, before describing next steps for the development of MacroScope.

The use of generative design tools for collaborative design tasks has been common practice in the fields of HCI and Design. In this pictorial, we present the evolution of an open-ended design tool: a scale model of a car showroom, used to investigate collaborative interactions in spatial environments. The features of the scale model evolved through several impromptu usage scenarios. With this contribution, we share our observations about the use of the prototype as a means of communication, as well as a means of inspiration, and argue for the use of non-prescriptive design tools in collaborative design projects.

Crafting interactive artifacts is typically associated with synthesizing, making, constructing, putting things together. In this paper, we discuss how these activities can be contrasted with de-synthesizing activities that revolve around decomposition, dissection, and taking things apart. Based on framings that emphasize how related practices are valuable in engineering processes, we aim to unlock the potential of de-constructive engagements with interactive technologies as a material driven (design) practice. We propose un-crafting as a framework of four modes of taking interactive artifacts apart (i.e., un-crafting for material exposition, material inspiration, material inquiry, and material exploration) aiming to pinpoint de-constructive episodes inherent to design processes, as well as to encourage the refinement of respective techniques and methods.

Gaze is an important aspect in social communication. In this paper we present a first exploration of visualizing gaze in the co-located physical world. LaserViz augments gaze in the physical world by means of an eye-tracking enabled wearable device that laser beams the gaze position to real world objects. Based on an initial prototype, we explored the effects of shared gaze through a collaborative as well as a competitive scenario in a co-located setting. This paper discusses the insights and implications following these explorations for the concept of shared gaze in the co-located physical world.

A variety of concepts in contemporary Human-Computer Interaction and Interaction Design (research) are labeled by adding attributes, such as "slow", "unaware" or "counterfunctional", to "technology", "object" or "thing". However, what do these labels disclose about a technology or an interaction? What are they supposed to express, what do they conceal? In order to identify labelling mechanisms in our (research) community, we describe five cases and analyze their labels, concepts, and intentions. Among others, we argue that the labels and the expressed aims or intentions do not always correspond and explore alternative ways to articulate and label design concepts or philosophies. We conclude by calling for Interaction Design labels that are based on careful reflections of conceptual histories, inscriptions, and intentions.

In this work in progress, we present a set of seven design sensitivities, which address time in interaction design. We exemplarily illustrate how time affects and is affected by tangible, embodied, or embedded artifacts. Thereby, we discuss slow versus fast technology, time as context of use, time as theme, time as content, ephemerality, historicality, and chronology. Those design sensitivities are an initial step towards a framing of the different notions and aspects in regards to time in interaction design.

Handheld touch screen based devices, such as smartphones or tablets, typically provide limited haptic feedback. On cur- rent devices, what is visually perceived and what is tactile and kinesthetically felt is semantically uncoupled. In order to improve embodied interaction on handheld screen based devices, new ways to provide richer haptic feedback are re- quired. In this paper, we present TorqueScreen, a prototypi- cal system combining a handheld touch screen device (i.e., a tablet) with an actuated flywheel capable of imposing angular momentum onto the tablet. The TorqueScreen design allows interlinking the movement and physics of virtual objects on the screen with the torque as haptic output imposed on the tablet. We describe the design and implementation of the de- vice, illustrate the resulting design space, and discuss future improvements and potential applications.

With this studio-workshop we aim to explore and debate how disassembling computational things can yield a potential for design practices. We believe there are significant qualities to be found in extending the mundane 'taking things apart' into an elaborate practice of un-crafting. The studio workshop comprises a series of collaborative disassembly activities with the aim of beginning to identify the key qualities and issues at stake. We also hope to have a diverse crowd, whose interdisciplinary viewpoints will enable us to ground an un-crafting practice in a diverse set of contexts.

This paper presents a design exploration of full-body interaction games played in cars. It describes how we have designed, implemented, and evaluated the core experiences of three different games, which were all aimed at making sitting properly more fun for players/children while travelling by car. By making the restricted body an integral part of gameplay, we hope to, as a side product of gameplay, bring about the best and also most safe body posture for young players/children travelling by car, i.e., sitting reasonably upright and still in their child seat with their head leaning back on the neck rest. Another outcome of this could also be an overall safer situation in the car, in that children not sitting still in their child seats while being driven might be stressful for the driver. By presenting the details of our design efforts in this particular design context, we hope to add also to the knowledge we, in HCI, have for how to design bodily experiences with technology at large.

Movement-based digital games typically make it clear whose movement representation belongs to which player. In contrast, we argue that selectively concealing whose movement controls which representation can facilitate engaging play experiences. We call this "innominate movement representation" and explore this opportunity through our game "i-dentity", where players have to guess who makes everyone's controller light up based on his/her movements. Our work reveals five dimensions for the design of innominate movement representation: concealing the association between movement and representation; number of represented movements; number of players with representations; location of representation in relation to the body and technical attributes of representation. We also present five strategies for how innominate representation can be embedded into a play experience. With our work we hope to expand the range of digital movement games.

In this note we discuss and argue about how taking things apart and disassembling can be meaningful practices in explorative design projects. In particular, we report on an explorative design exercise about taking apart an unfamiliar device. Relating to this design situation, we provide accounts for how collaborative hands-on experience can support reaching common ground and acquiring shared material understanding in an interdisciplinary design team through establishing a material brief. In the end we reflect and discuss how this may complement our practices regarding materials and interaction design.

In this studio we explore the design of interactive electronic accessories made from natural materials such as wood, copper, silver, wool and leather. A set of handcrafted sensor components along with easy to use sensor boards that connect with example smartphone software, will be utilized as a toolkit for the studio activities. Participants will, through hands-on activity, create with, learn about and discuss the role of natural materials in the design of wearable interactive designs.

Automobiles are environments rich of data that have a high potential to be used as input for research and design. Various difficulties accessing car data exclude HCI experts from making use of this data in novel interfaces and research projects. We present the CarDaT (Car Data Toolkit) that uses Android smartphones to provide multidimensional sensor data in a minimal invasive way. CarDaT combines smartphone sensor data with data sources like OBD-II as well as other easily available remote data (e.g., weather). This data and the provided connectivity enable researchers to gather data on human behavior and designers to create novel context-aware interface solutions. Thus, CarDaT offers a low-cost, manufacturer independent and scalable in-car agile prototyping and research environment. In this paper we describe how we used smartphones in the CarDaT as tools for automotive research and design. We demonstrate potentials of CarDaT by describing three applications that we developed with the toolkit, namely rear seat games, an experience sampling study, as well as an experiment using car data in a driver distraction study to inform design.

In HCI, and especially in interaction design, the material aspect of interactions is currently emphasized. Nevertheless, it is challenging to theoretically frame the variety of digital or immaterial, and physical materials. In order to contribute to this materiality discourse, we reflect on McLuhan's work on media analysis and on Latour's Actor-Network Theory in this paper. Both emphasize the active role of the material - be it media or any other kind of non-human actors - in the interplay with the human. Thus, we establish junctures between their findings and materials, as used in interaction design in HCI. We discuss McLuhan's claim to focus on new sensory effects and ways of interaction brought forth by new media. Furthermore, we illustrate how describing the connections between materials, designers, and users in terms of Latour's Actor-Networks can be beneficial for interaction design. Finally, we discuss the respective methodology and its relation to research through design.

The steering wheel is a promising space for the integration of displays since in the car there is very limited space for integrating interactive modalities for the driver that are close to the preferred field of view as well as in an easy to reach position. When the wheel is turned, the screen content could change its orientation to increase the readability and therefore reduce the distraction from the road. Thus, this paper describes three different content rotation behaviors for steering wheel displays. To investigate what effect these behaviors have on the driver in terms of visual distraction from the road we conducted a user study with eye tracking asking participants to read the current speed. We found no differences in terms of distraction and response time between the different rotation behaviors. Compared to a similar display in a dashboard position the visual distraction was reduced.

In this paper we report a user study to investigate the effect of semantic weight in a touch-based drag and drop task. The study was motivated by our own interest in exploring potential factors that influence touch behavior and supported by results in related neuroscience research. The question we intended to answer is: "Do people drag the representation of a smaller and lighter real world object (e.g. an apple) different than the representation of a heavier and larger real world object (e.g. a car)?". Participants were asked to perform a drag and drop task repeatedly on a tablet device. Dragged objects were the same physical size on screen, but represented real world objects that were either heavy and large or light and small. We studied two representation modalities (i.e. image and text). In both representation modalities, semantically heavier objects were dragged significantly faster than semantically lighter objects.

In this paper we describe an exploratory design study of the potentials of taste as a playful interaction modality. We present the design and implementation of LOLLio -- an interactive lollipop that serves as a haptic input device that dynamically changes its taste. We conclude this paper with three basic principles for potential game designs, where we see how the interactive lollipop we have built can foster novel, playful game experiences.

Safe interaction with interactive systems in the car requires both hands to be placed on the steering wheel and eyes to be kept on the road. To allow safe text input in the vehicle, we propose the back of the steering wheel as space for interactive text input elements. In the effort to explore this space, we present two design alternatives for text input elements; one has two sliding sensors and the other has three buttons on each side of the wheel. In combination with a head up display and an adapted keyboard layout, these elements allow text input while driving with the eyes on the road an the hands on the wheel. In a first study with end users, we show the potential of the proposed text input approach for future vehicles.

Although alternative means of text input in vehicles have already been developed, touchscreen keyboards still pose a standard solution for this input in modern vehicles. Until alternative means of text input will be widely available in vehicles, it is important to further investigate potential improvements in button text input on touch screens. This paper presents a study in which we compared three means of text input for navigation destination entry on a touchscreen in the central console: two keyboards using a QWERTY and an ABC layout, respectively, and a novel 5Button input approach using only 5 buttons to type in city names. The study focused on performance, distraction, and user experience caused by the different keyboards. Results show that the QWERTY and ABC keyboards performed better in terms of perceived workload than the 5Button approach. Performance and perceived usability were best with the QWERTY keyboard, even compared to the ABC keyboard. No significant differences between the systems were found in lane keeping behavior. The main downside of the 5Button approach was the increase of mental workload compared to the other keyboards.

In order to design in-car interfaces in a user-centered way it is necessary to understand users' experiences (UX). Therefore it is beneficial to gain early insight on the user acceptance (UA) of the system under development as a part of a holistic understanding of UX in the car. This paper describes a pre-study on the influence of drivers' characteristics (such as gender, self-concept, opinion) on the UA of eco-friendly in-car interfaces. Five interfaces that support environmental friendly driving were presented in an online questionnaire. No influences of socio-demographic variables and the self-concept components of the driver were found on UA. In opposition to that it is shown that users' wish for technology support and the general attitude towards technology have an influence on UA.