We report on a long-term participatory design research project in three social housing apartments that explores how design can extend the catalogue of domestic (energy) technologies beyond dominant industrial premises of scalability and efficiency. This pictorial walks through dioramas of the homes and their idiosyncrasies – constructed from visits, sketches, probes, participant-taken photographs, floor plans, local histories and theories, reflections, and speculations. We argue that homes and households, particularly in contexts that require resourcefulness, act as repositories of alternative potentials. Through a situated spatial analysis, we explore how residents navigate the gaps between standardized architecture and diverse, lived spaces using low and high-tech solutions that work. Four resulting designs collectively sensitize and expand an alternative approach to designing domestic technologies, challenging dominant notions of what counts as novel in the context of the home.

Together with 11 lower-income households, we explored how assumptions embedded in domestic energy interfaces match their needs, expectations, and everyday practices around domestic energy use and comfort. Catalyzed by cultural probes, residents (1) shared the diverse strategies and know-how involved in making themselves comfortable, (2) offered arguments for their everyday futures, and (3) explained what we can learn from them. A first tentative definition of energy interfaces opens the door to what we consider interfaces, how they support developing know-how and how they co-construct everyday practices. Residents’ resourceful solutions elicit reflections on what is considered valid participation in the energy transition. From the findings, we synthesize alternative starting points for the design of energy interfaces: We outline design opportunities to expand the (un)comfortable by revisiting comfort as fluid and multi-sensory. Furthermore, we sensitize how design can build on residents’ existing strategies for making comfortable, rather than replace them.

There is a rise of digitally fabricated products based on users’ data, known as ultra-personalization. In earlier works, tools that allow future wearers to express their needs and wishes are scarce. We took a Research through Design approach to create two tools for future wearers to capture their needs and wishes for fit in the context of workwear: a digital and an embodied tool. Five wearers of workwear have tried the two tools and selected their preferred one. Ultra-personalized lab coats were then produced for them. Participants were interviewed about their perceptions of the tools. We present opportunities and perceived risks associated with both tools, such as issues concerning the accuracy of measurement, profession-specific movements, and effort. The embodied tool was met with a high appreciation while the digital tool has more potential for scalability. This work suggests that qualities of both tools can be reconciled.

This studio revolves around designing with systemic openness and introduces the IoT Sandbox as a tool to design with systemic openness through multi-activity and multi-person scenarios. The studio knows three learning goals: (1) how to characterize and facilitate a design challenge with systemic openness, (2) how to design with multi-activity and multi-person scenarios, and (3) how to design for diverse interaction styles in a systems context. In a hands-on manner the fundamental concepts and challenges are introduced and experienced through a series of short design sprints. The studio ends with a reflective discussion on the propositions created by the participants, in relation to the learning goals as well as the studio and the IoT Sandbox platform.

This pictorial describes the design and design process of the Domino interfaces: a pair of light interfaces consisting of a tangible user interface and its touchscreen equivalent. This pair of user interfaces is designed to be used in an exploratory comparative study concerning the influence of personality traits on perceived usability. We present the design process of this pair of user interfaces, focussing on the unique challenges of designing a functionally equivalent set of physical and graphical user interfaces. The exploratory comparative study, which utilizes these Domino interfaces, is presented next. We continue with the results from the study after which we conclude with a concise discussion and outlook on future work.

3D scanning technologies provide designers with tools to generate a digital representation of the human body that can be used in the design of ultra-personalized apparel and wearables. However, prior work shows that the body scanning process can be an uncomfortable experience for users. In this work, we take a first-person perspective to identify frictions in the experience of being body scanned compared to having one's body measurements taken by a professional tailor. Based on our findings, we offer a reframing of body scanning as a collaborative process, and discuss implications for the design of tools and processes that shift agency in the generation of body data towards users. Our paper is relevant to design researchers and practitioners interested in taking a co-design approach to ultra-personalization.

In this pictorial we present a prototype of a novel personalized garment that provides rich haptic feedback for posture awareness in the context of repetitive strain injury (RSI). Unlike prior work concerned with posture correction, our aim was to design a garment that would allow the user to gain an awareness of his posture with a help of sensorial experiences. Collaboratively engaging the user as a co-designer in movement enactment, movement analysis and embodied co-design sessions enabled us to design a garment that offers posture awareness through playful and somaesthetic experience. We offer a reflective analysis of how our co-design approach enabled us to design for personalization, somaesthetics and playfulness in posture awareness.

This paper presents a design case study from industry that explores designing for personal health ecosystems. Following on from previous work on ecologies that gives a predominantly theoretical perspective, we present a more applied and design-oriented perspective. To do so, we build on our previously-developed data-enabled design approach, which utilizes contextual, behavioral and experiential data from situated design experiments as creative material. This approach comprises two steps, of which this paper presents the first (contextual) step. We introduced a small adaptable ecosystem of multiple artifacts, in four family homes over a period of eight weeks, through which we explored and further expanded on valuable ecosystem relationships. The insights gained were translated into three design opportunities that inform a future second step. We highlight and discuss practical examples from our situated explorations, and discuss how our data-enabled design approach served in designing for the complexity and versatility inherent to these ecosystems.

This pictorial describes the design and design process of the IoT Sandbox: a (scale model of a) smart home equipped with actuators and a modular interface that controls the interactive aspects of the smart home. This modular interface can 'grow" together with the house it controls whereby it offers unique possibilities for designers to explore different avenues of physically rich interaction in domestic personal spaces. We demonstrate that also physically rich interfaces can respond adequately to the dynamics of home IoT systems. We conclude with insight from the design process and a concise discussion and outlook to future work.

This paper presents a designerly exploration of the potential values of parent-tracked baby data in interactions between parents and healthcare professionals (HCPs). Where previous work has used parent-tracked data as part of the solution to a problem, we contribute by starting our design exploration from data, using it as creative material in our design process. As we intend to work towards a system that could be viable across different levels of care, we invited three different types of HCPs and five families with newborns, for a five-week situated design exploration. Facilitated by an open and dynamic data collection toolkit, parents and HCPs could together decide what data to collect. In a continuous dialogue, they reflected on the relevance of that data in their interaction. Based on this, we continuously and remotely developed two concepts.

Public issues are complex: they concern many different stakeholders who have conflicting stakes and are involved from their unique perspective. Working on public issues requires an open process that allows stakeholders to not only contribute to decision-making but also to take up a role in the process. We propose [X]Changing Perspectives, a product service system that stimulates participatory sensemaking: the joint construction of meaning between individuals that could not have been reached on their own.

In this paper, we discuss how the implementation of design-inclusive User Experience Research (UXR) has influenced the composition of UXR and design activities in the industrial setting of Philips Design. We present three design case studies that were executed in a time span of three years: a baby sleep project; a pregnancy project; and a baby bottle-feeding project. Through a retrospective analysis we conclude that the approach adopted in these cases progressed from complete separation of UXR and design activities to design-inclusive UXR in which design forms an integral part of research. This is reflected by a rearrangement of project activities to identify, envision, enable and evaluate user experiences. Previously the UXR (identify and evaluate) and design (envision and enable) activities were executed sequentially. Now, these four project activities merge in studying design interventions in context over a prolonged time, to iteratively explore and advance UX design qualities.

This paper presents the design case study of a connected baby bottle, which is used as an exploration towards a data-enabled design framework for designing intelligent products, services and ecosystems targeting behavior change. We explore how contextual, behavioral and experiential data can be used as design material for remote insight collection and remote design intervention. The first "contextual" iteration sets out to understand the design context with its complexities, based on a combination of quantitative sensor data and qualitative interview sessions. The second "informed" iteration utilizes design probes, remotely connected to a data-canvas, to explore behavioral, experiential and contextual consequences of design interventions. The dynamic and open character of the introduced data-canvas allowed us to iterate quickly without requiring physical presence of the designer. Finally, we translate the findings from this case study into a two step model for data-enabled design that we further discuss to outline what next steps are required towards constructing a framework for data enabled design.

This one-day studio revolves around the exploration of expressive movement qualities in shape-change by means of physical sketching and prototyping. It is a hands-on studio where participants first explore expressive movement qualities and interaction scenarios with a generic shape-changing platform and then abstract the explored movement qualities to model them in detail using cardboard modeling techniques combined with an Arduino controlled actuator (the advanced cardboard modeling platform). We recognize and want to zoom in on the potential of the expressiveness of shape-change in the context of human-product interaction as an emerging field in HCI research. In this studio we aim to both acquaint participants with new, low threshold platforms for exploration and give them insight in and a vocabulary of expressive movement qualities in shape-change.

This studio revolves around the exploration of (tangible and actuated) interactive products and systems by means of physical sketching and prototyping. It is a hands-on studio where cardboard modeling techniques are combined with Arduino controlled sensors and actuators (the advanced cardboard modeling platform) to explore the notion of 'the aesthetics of the third way'. The 'aesthetics of the third way' recognizes different approaches to 'dematerialization' (the process of the physical becoming digital, e.g., LPs and CDs become digital files and loose the physical media) and tries to balance the qualities of both the physical and the digital in a new manner. In this workshop we both aim to acquaint participants with a new, low threshold platform for exploration as give them insight in -and a vocabulary of the 'third way. The studio lasts the whole day -- a six hour time slot.

This workshop investigates how to apply embodied situated cognition to the design for interaction. Participants combine embodied experiences, prototyping and theory. We aim for deep-level linkage of theory and practice by uncovering some of the more complex challenges that embodiment presents in the context of concrete design cases.

In this paper Freed is presented, a system that enables design students to spatially organize their digital collection, define relations between collection content and reflect on it. The system features a force-based layout that allows to explore spatial organizations, and hence to gain new insights. Its main advantage over existing software, is that it empowers the students to create different views of their digital collection. A view is a spatial organization of a selection of the collection content and its relations. It can e.g. be used for a specific design activity or project phase, for organizing work around a specific topic, or for explaining the perspective of a given student or stakeholder. Feedback of design students working with Freed during their design projects, and results from a workshop as measured by a questionnaire, show positive prospects for adoption of the system during the design process.

Central to this studio is the question of how to design for rich and embodied (meaningful) interaction. We approach this question from a designerly perspective and find inspiration in the theory of ecological perception and in the domain of tangible and embodied interaction. As we aim for a meaningful interaction style that is firmly rooted in human experience and the diverse human skills, we present cardboard modeling as a designerly exploration tool that offers experiential insight into the solution domain of a given interaction design challenge. The studio has two distinct parts: part one aims at familiarizing the participants with the cardboard modeling technique and part two emphasizes the use of the cardboard modeling technique as an instrument to explore meaningful interaction. During the second part of the studio also the quality of the interaction solutions are discussed through presentations. The studio runs from 9.30h to approximately 17.00h.

The research on Tangible Interaction (TI) has been inspired by many different disciplines, including psychology, sociology, engineering and human-computer interaction (HCI). Now that the field is getting more mature, in the sense that basic technologies and interaction paradigms have been explored, we observe a growing potential for a more design-oriented research approach. We suggest that there are several arguments for this proposed broadening of the TI-perspective: 1) the need for designing products within contexts-of-use that are much more challenging and diverse than the task-oriented desktop (or tabletop) systems that mostly inspire us today, 2) the interest to also design TI starting from existing physical activities instead of only as add-ons to digital applications, 3) the need for iterative design and evaluation of prototypes in order to develop applications that are grounded within daily practice over prolonged periods of time, and 4) the need to extend ease-of-use to more hedonic aspects of interaction such as fun and engagement