People use technology to stay in touch with their family and friends. To design novel technologies that bring us closer, the theoretical concept of image schemas is a perfect fit. Image schemas are abstract representations of embodied experiences which can be used to design intuitive, inclusive and innovative technologies. However, their application in design processes requires additional effort and time, while existing design tools often lack a theoretical foundation for social closeness. To address this gap, we sourced domain specific image schemas and conducted iterative user-centred research through design, to create an easy-to-use image schema design tool which facilitates the creation of closeness technologies. In this pictorial, we document our process and provide a design tool that connects theory with actionable design strategies, providing designers with clear guidance and a practical tool for metaphorical integration. The tool can be found at https://osf.io/twndg/.

Applying image schema theory to the design of user interfaces has been shown to lead to more intuitive, inclusive, and innovative interaction. We propose that this success can be transferred to the design of data physicalisations (dataphys). But currently designers didn't use image schemas purposefully because the documentation of image schemas is too bulky to apply in practice. Here we propose an image schema toolkit as a more concise instrument to support dataphys design processes. In this work we report on a research-through-design approach aimed at finding appropriate instantiations of image schemas to include in the toolkit. In an iterative process including analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, we created image schema icons, tokens, and interactive objects. Through the design and evaluation of these artefacts we generated knowledge about image schemas, how to instantiate them in visual and physical ways and how to organize them in a toolkit.

Air traffic control (ATC) is a safety-critical work domain that has a history of applying tangible elements in its workstations. In the past, development was mostly technology-driven, which resulted in usability challenges like handling multiple input and output devices. In this work, we followed a user-centred design approach with air traffic controllers (ATCOs). Starting from the users’ need for haptic feedback, we developed a novel tangible interaction concept for ATC. We iterated a set of tangibles – Fin, Whale, Coin, and Flatterer – based on formative evaluations with 24 ATCOs. From our qualitative results we extracted dimensions relevant to ATCOs‘ user experience including familiarity, efficiency and engagement. Our results can provide guidance and inspiration for the design of future ATC interfaces.