Haptic technologies have advanced rapidly, yet exploration of robotic touch remains dominated by replicating realistic environmental cues or hand gestures, which narrows the design space and risks social resistance. This paper argues for alternatives: grounded in the notion of “otherness” from human-robot interaction (HRI), we propose treating robotic touch’s inherent otherness as a design quality. Instead of being a limitation in pursuing realism, otherness can be embraced to elicit ambiguity and provoke alternative interpretations, fostering expressive and evocative robotic touch design. To develop this perspective, we analyze inspirational art and design precedents and four design research cases through a reflective Research through Design (RtD) approach. Through this analysis, we articulate a set of design languages structured around why otherness matters for touch meaning-making, how it can be shaped through design strategies, and where it can be embedded within robotic touch systems. We conclude by reflecting on the tensions and risks involved in designing robotic touch with otherness in mind.

Historically, blood glucose monitoring (BGM) device design has focused on the physiological aspects of diabetes, with less consideration for the psychological aspects of relating the measurement to one's experienced symptoms. In this pictorial, we explore how the subjective experience of blood glucose monitoring can be supported. We developed the BGM diary, a training system for existing BGM devices. The BGM diary involves a practice of guessing and measuring of blood glucose, followed by an annotation of felt symptoms to facilitate learning about experiences and symptoms. We unpack how blood glucose work could involve persons with diabetes in other ways in their care program through an elaboration on the design aspects of the BGM diary and reflections with a diabetes nurse.

A growing number of design researchers explore engagement with and through biodata. To help make sense of this growing space, we synthesize three emergent themes: (1) expanding notions of biodata and bodies, (2) attending to a greater diversity of human bodies and experiences with biodata, and (3) biodata collaborations between human and non-human bodies. We illustrate these themes with selected design examples. From this synthesis, we develop three interconnected fabulations reimagining alternative engagements with biodata: Weaving Alongside, Diffracting Selves, and Collective Affect. Our discussion unpacks conceptual work of the fabulations, offering invitations for design research to explore alternative ways of living and knowing together with biodata.

Physical computing concerns the design of systems that can sense and respond to the world around them, which is why it is often used in interaction design projects in educational settings. However, students who encounter physical computing for the first time are typically not aware of the form factors and the potential for interaction of the various sensing and actuating possibilities. To complement existing touchpoints that these students have with physical computing, we present electronic smörgåsbords: boards that display collections of physical computing components that are available inhouse in an organised and interactive way to support the initiation of interaction design projects. The development of the boards allowed us to articulate four principles for their design, which are intended to inspire the development of future educational material.

Since the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), researchers have asked how intelligent computing systems could interact with and relate to their users and their surroundings, leading to debates around issues of biased AI systems, ML black-box, user trust, user’s perception of control over the system, and system’s transparency, to name a few. All of these issues are related to how humans interact with AI or ML systems, through an interface which uses different interaction modalities. Prior studies address these issues from a variety of perspectives, spanning from understanding and framing the problems through ethics and Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives to finding effective technical solutions to the problems. But what is shared among almost all those efforts is an assumption that if systems can explain the how and why of their predictions, people will have a better perception of control and therefore will trust such systems more, and even can correct their shortcomings. This research field has been called Explainable AI (XAI). In this studio, we take stock on prior efforts in this area; however, we focus on using Tangible and Embodied Interaction (TEI) as an interaction modality for understanding ML. We note that the affordances of physical forms and their behaviors potentially can not only contribute to the explainability of ML systems, but also can contribute to an open environment for criticism. This studio seeks to both critique explainable ML terminology and to map the opportunities that TEI can offer to the HCI for designing more sustainable, graspable and just intelligent systems.

Contemporary self-tracking devices take forms that reflect particular cultures of self-tracking that emphasize clinical perspectives and numerical precision. In this pictorial, we explore alternative forms to speculate on other possible self-tracking cultures. We present how we involved experts on the relationship between the gut and the brain to inspire a design brief for an alternative gut tracking device. This led to the design of Loupe and Lightbox, which together operate to externalize gut biota for closer examination, aesthetic appreciation, and reflection on the self. The device represents an example of self-tracking as cultivation-building a longer-term relationship with the self as something to be nurtured, tended to, and cared about.

As self-tracking practices continue to proliferate, there has been a call for a consideration of how the design of these devices influence the users experience of themselves and their bodies beyond utility, efficacy and accuracy. The research product Ovum was designed to facilitate a DIY, shared, domestic experience, rather than an expert-led, individual, clinical experience of fertility tracking. Ovum uses the method of saliva sampling to determine ovulation. This paper unpacks the findings from a three-month long deployment of Ovum with seven couples trying to conceive. Besides an evaluation of the device in terms of the three experiential qualities aimed for in the design process, we report on the consequences of executing a design deployment that resembles a clinical trial. We contribute our experience in order to develop an understanding of how designing for the body places interaction designers in novel and complex situations.

Medical devices are moving out of the clinic and into the home. The design of these devices shapes our experience of interacting with our bodies. We attend to ovulation tracking devices that aid conception. We present Ovum; a research product that will be deployed in a long-term, qualitative study with couples trying to conceive. The contributions of this pictorial are the framing of the design space around at-home ovulation tracking devices and the presentation of our approach to this design space through working with oppositional experiential qualities by designing for fertility tracking as a shared, domestic and do-it-yourself experience.

Both a provocative artistic object and research artefact, Blo-nut is part of a project where we explore novel robotic behaviour away from the mimicry of complex human expressions more commonly associated with robotic form and movement. In this pictorial we start by outlining our underlining design principles for the design process and use images to describe the making, real-time GUI and the "choreographic sketching' of Blonut's movement characteristics. Finally, we argue for embracing novel and provoking 'otherness' in form and material when exploring interaction and communication with social robots.

The design of social robots usually does not focus on their kinetic expression, and often follows the assumption that their appearance should be human or animal like. To encourage a broader understanding of the possibilities for design of social robots, and as an inquiry into alternative relations with them, we present two robots, the Lat-Sac and the Blo-Nut, which are purposefully moving away from typical social robot design. We present how we engaged performance experts in the choreographic sketching of their elastic expression, and how we staged the robots in a fictitious near-future scenario to create a discursive space for reflection on emerging relations. Based on these encounters we discuss how acknowledging the otherness of social robots can be valuable in designing as well as growing intriguing relations with them.

In this pictorial we present the form-giving process of a Hedonic Haptic player, a wearable device that plays vibrotactile patterns on the body. We depict how we explored the aesthetics of the vibrotactile design space, how we constructed a platform as body of a hedonic experience, and how we developed different vibrotactile compositions. These activities collectively show how combinations of experiencing form, composing form, and materializing form can contribute to the aesthetic form-giving practice in interaction design.

This paper presents the ongoing design research and preliminary results in the field of family-centered healthcare, in particular directed to families with children at the age of 0-2 years with Down Syndrome. A central concern of these families is parent-child bonding, as bonding is often disrupted due to a lack of feedback from infants. We designed for parent-child bonding following a multi-stakeholder inquiry, in our case a family, a developmental and child psychologist, a physiotherapist specialized in child-care, and a family therapist. Based on an inquiry we argue that parent-child bonding can be supported through playful interactive mirroring. We designed a prototype to promote mirroring through multimodal stimuli, such as light and sound. As a first evaluated prototype resulted in enthusiasm and a sense of pride for the parents, we propose further explorations on the notion of playful interactive mirroring and future studies with the designed platform.

Central to multi-stakeholder processes of participatory innovation is to generate knowledge about 'users' and to identify business opportunities accordingly. In these processes of collaborative analysis and synthesis, conflicting perceptions within and about a field of interest are likely to surface. Instead of the natural tendency to avoid these tensions, we demonstrate how tensions can be utilized by embodying them in provocative types (provotypes). Provotypes expose and embody tensions that surround a field of interest to support collaborative analysis and collaborative design explorations across stakeholders. In this paper we map how provotyping contributes to four related areas of contemporary Interaction Design practice. Through a case study that brings together stakeholders from the field of indoor climate, we provide characteristics of design provocations and design guidelines for provotypes for participatory innovation.

The use of material artefacts within the design process is a long-standing and continuing characteristic of interaction design. Established methods, such as prototyping, which have been widely adopted by educators and practitioners, are seeing renewed research interest and being reconsidered in light of the evolving needs of the field. Alongside this, the past decade has seen the introduction and adoption of a diverse range of novel design methods into interaction design, such as cultural probes, technology probes, context mapping, and provotypes.