Abstract Movement-based design methods have gained increased attention across various research fields and practices, particularly in interaction design. By engaging the body in movement, these methods have the potential to explore a richer, more intuitive, and immersive user experience. A recent project MeCaMinD1 brought together researchers from interaction and sports design to explore, collect, and document movement-based methods and make them practically useful across domains. The methods were explored through a series of workshops, furthering the team’s understanding of their use and practical applicability. This understanding was compiled into a set of design cards that we present here. We discuss the experience of using the resulting cards in movement-based design sessions. We found that while the cards are mostly used in designing, planning, and preparing sessions, they also function as support during the design sessions, used by both facilitators and participants. Based on a final ideation session with both novice and experienced facilitators, we sketch ways to support managing the cards during sessions, integrating them with movement and physical action.

Embodied design can be an effective approach for developing extended reality (XR) experiences by enabling design teams to ideate and prototype through hands-on physical interaction. This body-centric approach is particularly valuable for addressing the complexities and paradigm shifts inherent in XR systems, where users engage significantly with their bodies in virtual environments, i.e. through head movements, body orientation, and hand tracking among others. In this paper, we present an embodied design method, which we used to design an XR-based cooking learning tool aimed at fostering autonomous learning for individuals with intellectual disabilities. The learning tool features 360-degree video recipes with a configurable combination of immersive video and passthrough views to adapt to different user needs and contexts. Our method includes functional prototypes to iterate current design concepts and explore usability across different possible interaction modalities. These tools were used to implement the Wizard of Oz technique and simulate different interaction techniques-such as voice commands and simple button-based inputs. To assess the usability of these tools, we employed the subjective Quality of Experience (QoE) assessment. The inclusion of this form of evaluation directly within the embodied design process is a novel contribution, providing valuable information about the usability of the prototypes as embodied design tools. Finally, we present preliminary results of the workshop, which illustrate the usefulness of embodied design for the development of XR interactive experiences.

Movement-based design foregrounds the moving and sentient body, fostering holistic engagement with the surrounding physical, material, and sociospatial contexts. Over the years, this approach has yielded multiple methodologies, tools, and exemplars to support body-based ideation. In this studio, we explore tools that facilitate embodied thinking and the creative processes of designing with, through, and for the body. In particular, we focus on: i) embodied ideation tools, kits, and technology probes to prompt ideation; ii) sketching and other documentation techniques to materialize ephemeral embodied action during ideation. We will bring tools and techniques to engage with both aspects, and we will invite participants to bring their own, which can be physical or technological, low or high-fidelity. This hands-on studio will provide a space to collectively engage in embodied ideation and sketching; exploring, analysing, and engaging deeply with the available objects and methods. The studio will culminate in a rich set of visual material and an annotated portfolio, which will be shared with the broader community, fostering connections among designers interested in movement-based and tangible design.

We present the design and evaluation of the Movits, a minimalist toolkit for embodied sketching design explorations. The toolkit includes technology probes featuring minimalist wearable digital units that support the hands-on exploration and design of movement-driven interactions using multisensory feedback. The Movits are self-contained and generate audiovisual or vibrotactile patterns in response to movement-based inputs. We present the theoretical and empirical grounding driving our design process. We discuss the findings of using the Movits during four co-design workshops with design students, technologists, dancers and physiotherapists, where they resulted in being generative and adaptable to a range of embodied design approaches. We contend that the Movits can be favourable for those interested in a holistic design approach to wearables in general and specifically for those targeting movement-based application domains. © The Authors, 2024. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in DIS '24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3643834

Sensory technologies alter how we perceive our body, which can have profound implications for multiple domains. Prior work has contributed a myriad of artefacts and evaluative studies, but we still lack design knowledge to design meaningful body perception alterations facilitated by sensory technologies. To address this gap, we draw from soma design to propose a methodological approach centered on body sensations as design material. We articulate our approach based on a project on co-designing wearables to alter body perception together with professional dancers. Our approach involves engaging participants in articulating and sharing body sensations to others, and exploring somatically sensory stimuli to co-design concepts for future technologies. We contribute experiential facets of body sensations, movement and sensory potentials to alter sensations, methods and design strategies, and a collection of ideas. Our work can be relevant to design communities interested in sensory technologies, perceptual alterations and body sensations as material.

Extended Reality (XR) technology offers promising results to support skill training. In the field of surgical education, Virtual Reality (VR) has long been explored, showing the potential to foster improved skill development and learning. However, XR in this domain is still underinvestigated, and there is a lack of design knowledge, design methods, and guidelines to inform how to best design XR experiences for effective surgical training. Here, we focus on suture training and show how participatory embodied design activities with experienced surgeons can help open the design space and arrive at interesting design solutions. We report on a hybrid bodystorming combining physical props with XR headsets with passthrough capabilities, supporting rich embodied explorations, a better understanding and articulation of key steps of suturing, uncovering essential design requirements and features, and arriving at an interesting design concept proposal that can be inspiring for future works in the domain.

Inspired by the strong concept of Intercorporeal Biofeedback, here we present the design and development of a minimalist embodied sketching toolkit for designing wearables for motor learning. The toolkit includes technology probes featuring minimalist wearable digital units that support hands-on explorations and the design of potential future interactions driven by movement with multisensory feedback. These units are self-contained and generate audiovisual or vibrotactile patterns in response to body inputs such as movement, spatial orientation, and touch. Here, we present and characterise the toolkit, together with its theoretical and empirical grounding and the design values driving the design process. The toolkit can be useful for those interested in an embodied design approach to designing wearables in general, and specifically for those targeting movement, such as in motor learning application domains. It can complement and be used with other assorted non-digital objects during Embodied Sketching sessions, like bodystorming.

Body perception has a significant impact on people’s motor, emotional, and social functioning. We evaluated the potential of four different existing wearable prototypes, which provide sound or haptic bodily feedback to alter body perception. In a Research through Design workshop, we invited professional dancers as expert study participants to explore and assess our prototypes. Based on the workshop’s insights, we articulate the experiential quality of Body Transformation, which characterizes how dancers perceive and experience their bodies while interacting with such prototypes. The quality encompasses a perceptual and holistic transformation, impacting the feelings about body, movement and emotions, and where the sensory feedback’s evocative power is crucial. Additionally, it elicits different transformation valuations. We contribute a deeper understanding of the impact of sensory feedback on body perception, its potential for transforming people’s overall body experience, and methodological insights on the potential of working with dancers to evaluate wearable sensory technology.

Live action roleplay (larp) has a wide range of applications and can be relevant in relation to HCI. While there has been research about larp in relation to topics such as embodied interaction, playfulness, and futuring published in HCI venues since the early 2000s, there is not yet a compilation of this knowledge. In this article, we synthesize knowledge about larp and larp-adjacent work within the domain of HCI. We present a practitioner overview from an expert group of larp researchers, the results of a literature review, and highlight particular larp research exemplars which all work together to showcase the diverse set of ways that larp can be utilized in relation to HCI topics and research. This article identifies the need for further discussions toward establishing best practices for utilizing larp in relation to HCI research, as well as advocating for increased engagement with larps outside academia.

Wearables integrating movement sonification can support body-perception changes and related physical activity; yet, we lack design principles for such sonifications. Through two mixed-methods studies, we investigate sound pitch and movement direction interaction effects on self-perception during squat exercises. We measured effects on body perception, affective quality of the experience, and actual and perceived movement, and compared them with two control conditions: no-sound and vibrotactile feedback. Results show that regardless of movement direction, ascending pitch enhances several body feelings and overall experience quality, while descending pitch increases movement acceleration. These effects were moderated by exercise physical demand. Sound and vibrotactile feedback enhanced flexibility and strength feelings, respectively, and contributed to exercise completion in different ways. Sound was perceived as an internal-to-body force while vibrotactile feedback was perceived as an external-to-body force. Feedback effects were stronger in people with lower fitness levels. We discuss results in terms of malleability of body perceptions and highlight opportunities to support demanding physical activity through wearable devices.

Movement-based design methods are increasingly adopted to help design rich embodied experiences. While there are well-known methods in the field, there is no systematic overview to help designers choose among them, adapt them, or create their own. We collected 41 methods used by movement design researchers and employed a practice-based, bottom-up approach to analyze and characterize their properties. We found 17 categories and arranged them into five main groups: Design Resources, Activities, Delivery, Framing, and Context. In this paper, we describe these groups in general and then focus on Design Resources containing the categories of Movement, Space, and Objects. We ground the characterization with examples from empirical material provided by the design researchers and references to previous work. Additionally, we share recommendations and action points to bring these into practice. This work can help novice and seasoned design researchers who want to employ movement-based design methods in their practice.

The paramount measure of success for a machine learning model has historically been predictive power and accuracy, but even a gold-standard accuracy benchmark fails when it inappropriately misrepresents a disabled or minority body. In this work, we reframe the role of machine learning as a provocation through a case study of participatory work co-creating exergames by employing machine learning and its training as a source of play and motivation rather than an accurate diagnostic tool for children with and without Sensory Based Motor Disorder. We created a design probe, Cirkus, that supports nearly any aminal locomotion exergame while collecting movement data for training a bespoke machine learning model. During 5 participatory workshops with a total of 30 children using Cirkus, we co-created a catalog of 17 exergames and a resulting machine-learning model. We discuss the potential implications of reframing machine learning’s role in Assistive Technology for values other than accuracy, share the challenges of using “messy” movement data from children with disabilities in an ever-changing co-creation context for training machine learning, and present broader implications of using machine learning in therapy games.

Embodied, co-design and children-specific methods have been gaining traction in Interaction Design for Children, and their potential and benefits are well-established. Yet methods at the intersection of all three areas are scarcer. In addition, design researchers lack tools for the analysis and adaptation of existing methods, and the creation of new ones to suit the particularities of the design project at hand. Here, we present the Think-4-EmCoDe framework for the design and analysis of embodied co-design methods and techniques for children, which foregrounds key qualities in embodied interaction design research: (1) embodied awareness; (2) reflective imaginary; (3) emergence; (4) embodied memory; (5) situated relationality; (6) contingency; (7) playful engagement; (8) play practice; (9) developmental scaffolds; and (10) social dialogue. The framework has been developed drawing from several theories, methods, and frameworks in the areas of co-design and embodied design approaches. This framework allows designers to focus on both general design qualities for embodied experiences and the specific child perspective. We illustrate the use of the framework through the analysis of three design techniques and discuss its potential as an inspirational tool to understand, adapt and refine embodied co-design techniques for children.

Technology-supported movement learning has received increased attention in HCI. Previous design research has mostly focused on individual experiences, even though the social and situated context is essential to movement learning practices. Based on the experiences from two design projects in the fitness domain featuring open-ended biofeedback artefacts, we propose Intercorporeal Biofeedback as a strong concept to support the design and use of biofeedback in such practices. We ground the concept in situated movement learning theory, phenomenology of social cognition, and HCI work on biofeedback. We articulate four key characteristics of intercorporeal biofeedback: it provides participants with a shared frame of reference , upon which they engage in fluid meaning allocation and use it to guide attention and action , becoming an interactional resource . Intercorporeal biofeedback can serve to guide future design work for situated, social movement practices.

This paper presents a case study of designing and running a Larp (live action role play)-based summer camp in which middle school-age girls create social wearables, toward building computational and design skills, interest, and self-efficacy. Our design draws upon prior evidence that edu-larps can address the identity gap for underrepresented groups in STEM. The focus on creation of social wearables built using E-textiles builds on existing larp practices that use costuming as a method for establishing identity as well as for providing a platform campers can use to enhance their dramatic spectacles. Our findings will be of interest to those working in the areas of informal learning of computation through Arduino and another small device programming, as well as those interested in the intersection of larp and technology design practices, and edu-larp.

Design practices targeting playful movement-based interaction are changing rapidly with both technological and societal developments. In this paper, we provide a snapshot of movement-based interaction designers’ experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, by interviewing designers working in diverse roles that integrate physical human body movement and digital technologies (i.e., exergame and wearable game designers, playground and landscape architects, sports and dance trainers, and Sports-HCI professionals). Using grounded theory, we have identified two tactics from the designers’ experiences: (i) the significance of face-to-face embodied interactions throughout the entire movement-based interaction design process, and (ii) the importance of positive, yet critical, attitudes to technology for designing bodily experiences, including mixed use of non-technical materials and tools for rapid prototyping and iteration. However, it was evident that such tactics are often not feasible without physical interaction between the designer and users. The restrictions imposed by Covid-19, therefore, further revealed the importance of body movement to designing a playful movement-based interaction — from ideation to execution and testing. This paper offers a worrying view of movement-based interaction design during the Covid-19 era, while calling for further investigation to enrich the discourse that could contribute to this field, possibly also beyond the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The design space of social exergames remains narrow despite the many benefits of playing and exercising together. Towards opening this design space, we followed a Research through Design (RtD) approach focused on exergames that can be fun and immersive social training experiences. Through embodied sketching activities with designers and 10 pairs of players, we explored future games for the ExerCube, an immersive exergame platform. Our work contributes with forms of intermediate-level knowledge: a design space model (the Immersive Social Fitness—ImSoFit—Games model); and a novel design vocabulary including new bodily orientations in co-located physical interaction. We illustrate their use and value scrutinizing three of our games and applying three analytical lenses to 1) understand how design choices impact how players move together; 2) evaluate design expectations and analyze players’ behavior in relation to design choices; and 3) potentially extend the design space of immersive co-located social fitness games.

Warm-up games are widespread practices in multiple activities across domains, yet little scholarly work can be found about their role in physical training. Here, we study potential goals and benefits of warm-up games, and explore opportunities for technology inclusion through investigating a collection of warm-up games gathered: online, from a survey of online warm-up games curated, described, and used by Physical Education teachers; and in person, from an ongoing design research work as part of a technology-supported circus training course. Further, in the context of the latter, we conducted explorative design interventions, augmenting a range of the warm-up games with wearable technology. Our work surfaces major goals and benefits of warm-up games, which can be broadly classified as preparing participants physically, socially, and mentally. We also show how the inclusion of open-ended technology can support these goals and discuss broader opportunities for technology inclusion in warm-up games.

The growing interest in wearables for sports and fitness calls for design knowledge and conceptualizations that can help shape future designs. Towards that end, we present and discuss a design space of wearables for these practices, based on a survey of previous work. Through a thematic analysis of 47 research publications in the domain, we surface core design decisions concerning wearability, technology design, and wearable use in practice. Building on these, we show how the design space takes into account the goals of introducing technology, that design decisions can be either directly designed, or left open for appropriation by end-users; and the social organization of the practice. We characterize prior work based on the design space elements, which yields trends and opportunities for design. Our contributions can help designers think about key design decisions, exploit trends and explore new areas in the domain of wearables for sports and fitness practices.

In this pictorial, we turn to culture and traditions to present an annotated portfolio of play-food potentials, i.e. interesting design qualities and/or interaction mechanisms that could help promote playful and social engagement in food practices. Our portfolio emerged from a one-day workshop where we played with and analyzed a collection of 27 food traditions from diverse cultural backgrounds and historical periods. We highlight play forms and experiential textures that are underexplored in Human-Food Interaction (HFI) research. Our contribution is intended to inspire designers to broaden the palette of play experiences and emotions embraced in HFI.

Despite the capacity of play to spontaneously emerge in our daily life, the scope of application of play design in HCI is generally narrower, specifically targeting areas of pure leisure, or wholly utilitarian and productive play. Here we focus on the value of play design to respond to and support our natural gravitation towards emergent play that helps to meet our social and emotional needs. We present a bridging concept: Technology for Situated and Emergent Play, i.e. technology design that supports playful engagement that emerges interwoven with our everyday activities outside leisure, and that enriches these activities with socio-emotional value. Our intermediate-level contribution has value as a synthesis piece: it weaves together theories of play and play design and bridges them with concrete design examples. As a bridging concept, it contributes: i) theoretical grounding; ii) inspiring design exemplars that illustrate the theory and foreground its value; and iii) design articulations in the form of valuable experiential qualities and design features. Our work can help to focus design agendas for playful technology and inspire future designs in this space.

Technology probes have been used in co-creative embodied design processes to spur creativity and generate design ideas. We present a range of Training Technology Probes (TTPs), designed to facilitate collocated physical and social training. We deployed them in the context of a physical training course for children with motor challenges, where they were tested and iterated onsite through our participants' (instructors' and children's) creative uses. We report on intended/expected uses as well as improvised ones resulting from creative appropriations that were found useful in our physical activity. We discuss key core properties of the TTPs that supported productive creative appropriation. This work adds to others on technology probes by emphasizing their generative value in goal-oriented somatic explorations and practices, like our training course.

User involvement is well established in game and play design. But in a time when play design is becoming relevant in domains beyond pure entertainment, and play blends into everyday activity in diverse ways, we need to revisit old, and develop new, user involvement methods. Using a situated perspective and Research through Design, we present Situated Play Design (SPD), a novel approach for the design of playful interventions aimed at open-ended, everyday activities that are non-entertainment based. Like user-centered game and play design methods, our contribution leverages user engagement; like Participatory Design methods, our method acknowledges the co-creating role of end users. SPD extends those approaches by focusing on uncovering existing manifestations of contextual playful engagement and using them as design material. Through two case studies, we illustrate our approach and the design value of using existing and emergent playful interactions of users in context as inspirations for future designs. This allows us to provide actionable strategies to design for in-context playful engagement.

Wearables are integrated into many aspects of our lives, yet, we still need further guidance to develop devices that truly enhance in-person interactions, rather than detract from them by taking people's attention away from the moment and one another. The value of this paper is twofold: first, we present an annotated portfolio of 'social wearables', namely technology designs worn on the body that augment co-located interaction. The design work described can serve as inspiration for others. Then we propose a design framework for social wearables grounded in prior work, as well as our own design research, that can help designers to ideate by raising valuable questions to begin their inquiry with and use to evaluate their designs. We illustrate the evaluative value of this framework through two social wearable designs, each tested in the appropriate social setting.

Physical training can be frustrating and hard, especially for those who experience additional challenges to access and control their proprioceptive senses. In the context of designing for children with Sensory-based Motor Disorder, we designed and deployed a series of Training Technology Probes to be used in circus training. Here we focus on how these were used, tested, and appropriated by children and instructors during a six-week circus training course. Through these explorations, we identified a range of potential benefits from using their functions in training. We present the Physical Training Technology Probes and the benefits they brought to training. We show how the technology functions helped children focus and provided feedback related to posture and balance. Furthermore, their open-ended designs and versatile options for use were crucial in exploring their contributions to training, and in how they helped foster creative engagement with technology and training. Our work contributes towards understanding the specific requirements when designing for the target group, and more generally contributes with design strategies for technology support for skill training.

Designing technology to support instructed physical training is challenging, due to how instructions rely on complex interactional and situational social processes. To support in-the-moment instruction, we engaged in a co-creative Research through Design process with a Yoga instructor. Together, we designed and deployed Enlightened Yoga: a training class featuring wearable projecting lights that augment the instructor's and trainee's movements, and highlight the orientation and positioning of key body parts. We present insights from the design process and a study of the class. We show how the wearable lights enabled a new shared frame of reference between instructor and trainees, that became instructable through the way participants could reference and orient themselves to it. This allowed the instructor to extend his instructional strategies, and enabled trainees to better act upon cues. We discuss how this was made possible by jointly designing the technology, its coupling with the body, instructions and exercises.

Vulnerability is a common experience in everyday life and is frequently perceived as a flaw to be excised in technology design. Yet, research indicates it is an essential aspect of wholehearted living among others. In this paper, we present the design and deployment of 'True Colors', a novel wearable device intended to support social interaction in a live action roleplay game (LARP) setting. We describe the Research-through-Design process that helped us to discover and articulate the possibility space of vulnerability in the design of social wearables, as support for producing a sense of social empowerment and connection among wearers within the LARP. We draw conclusions that may be of value to others designing wearables and related technologies aimed at supporting co-located social interaction in games/play.

Today's spectrum of playful fitness solutions features systems that are clearly game-first or fitness-first in design; hardly any sufficiently incorporate both areas. Consequently, existing applications and evaluations often lack in focus on attractiveness and effectiveness, which should be addressed on the levels of body, controller, and game scenario following a holistic design approach. To contribute to this topic and as a proof-of-concept, we designed the ExerCube, an adaptive fitness game setup. We evaluated participants' multi-sensory and bodily experiences with a non-adaptive and an adaptive ExerCube version and compared them with personal training to reveal insights to inform the next iteration of the ExerCube. Regarding flow, enjoyment and motivation, the ExerCube is on par with personal training. Results further reveal differences in perception of exertion, types and quality of movement, social factors, feedback, and audio experiences. Finally, we derive considerations for future research and development directions in holistic fitness game setups.

The use of technology to assist in instructed fitness training in collocated social settings is underexplored. Here we focus on how technology can be designed to fit within, leverage, and be part of the strategies and tools that fitness trainees and instructors use to detect and correct performance errors. Drawing on ethnomethodological approaches and using the concept of correction to focus our analysis, we scrutinize the interaction between instructor and trainees in two fitness activities, AntiGravity Fitness and Pilates. We identify social configurations and resources employed in instances of correction. We also present an analytical tool useful for deconstructing such correction processes, highlighting the strategies and resources used by the social actors, and their impact on performance. Based on insights gained from our analyses, we propose design recommendations and identify design opportunities that capitalize on existing tools and collaborative correction strategies, such as scaffolding the correction process.

In this paper we propose that game design strategies and theories can be useful tools for supporting the design of innovative socio-technical systems aimed at supporting social co-presence. We support this proposal with an annotated portfolio of a series of research prototype games that investigate sensor affordances and configurations to sustain and enhance social co-presence. We introduce relevant theory from game studies (the magic circle; the MDA (mechanics/dynamics/aesthetics framework)) to help ground and guide the use of game design in HCI practice. We conclude with recommendations for adopting game design as a supplementary research technique, with caveats about the limits of the approach.

Designing wearable technology that supports physical and social engagement in a collocated setting is challenging. In this research, we reached out to an expert community of crafters of social experiences: larpers (live action role players). Larpers and larp designers have a longstanding tradition of designing and making use of a variety of elements, such as costumes, physical objects, environments, and recently also digital artifacts. These are crafted in support of co-experience values that we argue can inform the design of social wearables. We engaged in a co-design process with a game designer and co-founder of a larp production company, and embedded the resulting social wearables in a larp. Here, we present the results of this design and implementation process, and articulate design affordances that resonate with our larp designer' values. This work may inspire and inform researchers and designers creating wearable technology that is aimed at supporting collocated engagement.

SpokeIt is a mobile serious game for health designed to support speech articulation therapy. Here, we present SpokeIt as well as 2 preceding speech therapy prototypes we built, all of which use a novel offline critical speech recognition system capable of providing feedback in real-time. We detail key design motivations behind each of them and report on their potential to help adults with speech impairment co-occurring with developmental disabilities. We conducted a qualitative within-subject comparative study on 5 adults within this target group, who played all 3 prototypes. This study yielded refined functional requirements based on user feedback, relevant reward systems to implement based on user interest, and insights on the preferred hybrid game structure, which can be useful to others designing mobile games for speech articulation therapy for a similar target group.

In this paper, we present All the Feels, a tool that provides an overlay of biometric and webcam-derived data onto the interface of the popular video game streaming service, Twitch. This overlay provides visualization of heart rate, skin conductance, and facial emotion recognition. It is intended to enhance the spectator experience and improve streamer-spectator connection. We present results of a preliminary study investigating spectator reactions to the introduction of this tool, via a live test with a streamer. Analysis of the stream combined with survey responses from 17 spectators indicates enhanced enjoyment of the stream, and suggests that spectators may feel more connected to the streamer. This work opens up opportunities to improve stream quality and spectator engagement through the introduction of an interface that includes biometric signals.

During the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in supporting social play through the design of collocated digital games, alongside efforts to better understand social-physical modes of play. In this paper, we present relevant insights from a well-established gaming community, the larp (Live Action Role Play) community. This community has a longstanding tradition of making use of costumes, physical environments, and objects to shape player experience. We conducted a survey completed by 39 larpers concerning how they use digital technology in larp, and the way technology is designed and appropriated to augment the larp experience. Here, we present early results in the form of a preliminary taxonomy of technologies in larps, as well as key trends for design, use, and appropriation of technology to impact in-game social and emotional experience.

We present Paper Ladder, a low-cost, light-weight, and paper-based variant of the Sticky Ladder rating scale to collect children's product preferences in user studies. This paper version revamps the original, effective but arguably impractical evaluation method by making it more accessible to researchers. In this paper, we show its potential with preliminary results from a pilot study, where 45 grade-2 children used a Paper Ladder to rate their preference for different types of correctness feedback in a math app. Results suggest that Paper Ladder could be an effective and valuable instrument for conducting user studies with young children.

Designing for interactive performances is challenging both in terms of technology design, and of understanding the interplay between technology, narration, and audience interactions. Bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies afford new ways for artists to engage with audiences, and for audiences to become part of the artwork. Their deployment raises a number of issues for designers of interactive performances. This paper explores such issues by presenting five design ideas for interactive performance afforded by bio-sensing and bodily tracking (i.e. Microsoft Kinect) developed during two design workshops. We use these ideas, and the related scenarios to discuss three emerging issues namely: temporality of input, autonomy and control, and visibility of input in relation to the deployment of bio-sensors and bodily tracking technologies in the context of interactive performances.

Numerous studies have foregrounded how play is only partially shaped by the artifacts that their designers design. The play activity can change the structures framing it, turning players into co-designers through the mere act of playing. This article contributes to our understanding of how we can design for play taking into account that play has this transformative power. We describe four ways that players can engage with framing structures, which we classify in terms of whether players conform to explore, transgress, or (re)create them. Through the examples of three case studies, we illustrate how this model has been useful in design: as an analytical tool for deconstructing player behavior, to articulate design goals and support specific design choices, and for shaping the design process.

Designing bodily experiences is challenging. In this paper, we propose embodied sketching as a way of practicing design that involves understanding and designing for bodily experiences early in the design process. Embodied sketching encompasses ideation methods that are grounded in, and inspired by, the lived experience and includes the social and spatial settings as design resources in the sketching. Embodied sketching is also based on harnessing play and playfulness as the principal way to elicit creative physical engagement. We present three different ways to implement and use embodied sketching in the application domain of co-located social play. These include bodystorming of ideas, co-designing with users, and sensitizing designers. The latter helps to uncover and articulate significant, as well as novel embodied experiences, whilst the first two are useful for developing a better understanding of possible design resources.

Designing body games, games in which the main source of enjoyment comes from bodily engagement, is not an easy task. This article reports on a holistic design approach that considers the social and physical setting of the activity as design resources, together with the technology. We introduce the concept of embodied sketching as a method to gauge how different configurations of resources make for a good design. We report on the experience of using embodied sketching in exploratory workshops with children, as a way to co-create design ideas. The explorations were based on simple games implemented in a technological prototype, which allowed organizers and children to collectively explore game variations by changing the rules of the game, the physical configurations, and the roles of players. We report on our takeaways from four workshops at four different schools in three different countries.

The past decade has seen an increased focus on body movement in computer games. We take a step further to look at body games: games in which the main source of enjoyment comes from bodily engagement. We argue that for these games, the physical and social settings become just as important design resources as the technology. Although all body games benefit from an integrated design approach, the social and physical setting become particularly useful as design resources when the technology has limited sensing capabilities. We develop our understanding of body games through a literature study and a concrete design experiment with designing multiplayer games for the BodyBug, a mobile device with limited sensing capabilities. Although the device was designed for free and natural movements, previous games fell short in realizing this design ideal. By designing the technology function together with its physical and social context, we were able to overcome device limitations. One of the games was subsequently incorporated in its commercial release.

This paper investigates user perceptions of continuous identity as agents migrate between different embodiments. It reports an experiment seeking to establish whether migrating or not migrating the interaction memory of the agent would affect the user's perception of consistent agent identity over different embodiments. The experiment involved a treasure hunt in which a virtual agent migrated from a screen to a mobile phone in order to accompany a user while they searched for clues. A total of 45 subjects took part in three different conditions with 15 subjects in each. The outcome showed that the presence of memory affected the competence users ascribed to the virtual agent. However it had no significant effect on a strong perception of consistent identity across multiple embodiments.

This paper explores the issues that arise in the context of the migration of a robotic pet between different embodiments and the associated design challenges. In the following, we describe the perceptions that a group of children have of a dinosaur character crossing the boundary between its robotic embodiment (the Pleo commercial pet), and its virtual counterpart on a mobile phone. We analyse the children's perceptions of, as well as emotional reactions to, the migration of this character, and show how seemingly subtle variations in the migration process can affect the children's perception on the character and its embodiments. Among other findings, gaps in the migration process, or perceived unresponsiveness, appeared to be accompanied by anxiety in the participating children. Based on our results, we point to yet unsolved design challenges for migration in interactions with embodied characters, and offer insights for migration implementation.