People's identities change during life transitions, e.g., studying abroad. They bring everyday objects that embody memories and reflect their identities during such moves. To assist in these transitions, we ask how people's human identities could be influenced by their objects through an artificial agent. This paper presents an exploratory research-through-design study around how people undergoing life transitions experience conversing with their everyday objects through a chatbot. Drawing on a two-week field deployment and interviews with 12 participants, we contribute (1) a conceptualization of 'trans-embodiment' describing the asynchronous imagination of object and human identities on the chatbot, (2) empirical evidence of the resulting emotional and reflective experiences, and (3) three types of object identities for designing conversational agents that role-play objects. Our contributions sum up to triangulating human-agent-object identity as trans-embodiment in supporting life transitions.

Play is pivotal in fostering the emotional, social, and cultural dimensions of urban spaces. While generative AI (GAI) potentially supports playful urban interaction, a balanced and critical approach to the design opportunities and challenges is needed. This work develops iWonder, an image-to-image GAI tool engaging fourteen designers in urban explorations to identify GAI's playful features and create design ideas. Fourteen citizens then evaluated these ideas, providing expectations and critical concerns from a bottom-up perspective. Our findings reveal the dynamic interplay between users, GAI, and urban contexts, highlighting GAI's potential to facilitate playful urban experiences through generative agency, meaningful unpredictability, social performativity, and the associated offensive qualities. We propose design considerations to address citizen concerns and the `tourist metaphor' to deepen our understanding of GAI's impact, offering insights to enhance cities' socio-cultural fabric. Overall, this research contributes to the effort to harness GAI's capabilities for urban enrichment.

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.

In this paper we investigate how a combination of "speculative" design methods can be used to generate theoretical understandings for dynamic, colour-changing fabrics for garments. Specifically, we combine a first-person, autobiographical, research through design (RtD) approach that draws strategies from speculative design. We call this approach alternative presents, inspired by the work of James Auger, and explore it as a way to generate theoretical propositions for dynamic fabric that emphasize the lived experience over technological innovation. The contributions of this framing are twofold. Firstly, we offer a theoretical contribution to the literature on dynamic fabric. Secondly, we make a methodological contribution for how autobiographical design and RtD can be oriented speculatively to generate intermediate knowledge, with particular emphasis on social-technical aspects.

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.

Schön describes the way a designer engages with their materials as a "conversation". In clothing design this typically involves tangible and situated actions such as draping, ripping, and cutting-actions that evoke responses from the fabric at hand. Dynamic fabrics-surface-changing fabrics that combine digital and physical states-are still novel fashion-design materials. When working with the digital, intangible qualities of these fabrics, how does a dialogue unfold for designers accustomed to working physically with fabrics? In this paper we examine the design process of Phem, a collection of garments that use dynamic fabrics that function similarly to augmented reality. We reflect upon the improvisations required to satisfy a productive dialogue with the digital forms of these materials. We conclude with a discussion that proposes revisiting Schön's notion of a conversation in the context of digital forms, and use Ingold's perspectives on making to inform this inquiry.

This article describes tests that have been conducted with Tactile Dialogues, a textile pillow that can react to touch with vibrotactile stimuli and haptic sensations. Tactile Dialogues is designed to stimulate movement and interpersonal contact for patients in the late stages of dementia, their family members and their caregivers. The most recent prototype of the pillow has been tested during 15 separate visits of family members or caregivers with patients. The aim of these tests is to find out whether personalization of the vibrotactile stimuli is appreciated over a mirroring vibrotactile behavior. We propose a three-scale measurement to help family members and caregivers examine the responses of the patient: muscular relaxation, physical movement and interpersonal contact. Through the semi-structured interviews we identified that family members and caregivers do appreciate the opportunity to personalize the vibrotactile behavior and that the pillow mainly functions as a way to establish communication with the patient.

In this pictorial we visualize the growth plan for an inspirational test-bed of smart textile product service systems. The goal of the test-bed is to inspire and inform the Dutch creative industries of textile, interaction and service design to combine their strengths and share opportunities. The pictures exemplify the characteristic tools, approaches and prototypes for three phases of growth: Incubation, Nursery and Adoption.

Perceptual crossing is the reciprocal interplay of perceiving while being perceived. In this paper we discuss the last iteration of our ongoing research project on designing for perceptive qualities in systems of interactive products. We describe the design of explorative behavior in an artifact to enable the artifact and a person to engage in perceptual crossing. The explorative behavior is compared to the following and active behavior, the results of two earlier iterations. Through the iterations we formulated, applied and evaluated design relevant knowledge in the form of seven design notions. These notions inform design-researchers and design-practitioners on how to design for perceptive qualities in systems of interactive products. Here we specifically focus on how the artifact detects active perceptive behavior of a person, and how the artifact becomes aware of bygone perception and anticipates on future perception. An experiment shows how participants preferred the resulting explorative behavior that is closest to our theoretical framework based on phenomenology.

In this paper we describe our research on how to design for perceptive activity in artifacts in order for perceptual crossing between subject and artifact to happen. We base our research on the phenomenology of perception [19] and on ecological psychology [10]. Perceptual crossing is believed to be essential to share perception and thereby to feel involved in the situation [5,15]. We propose a theoretical model in which perceptive connections between user, artifact and event are presented. We designed an artifact to function as physical hypotheses [9] and show the design relevance of the model. In an experiment we investigate how the user's feeling of involvement is influenced in relation to differentiations of the proposed theoretical model. The results of our experiment show that indeed perceptual crossing between user and artifact influences the user's feeling of involvement with the artifact in their common space. We conclude with describing several design notions important for designing for perceptive activity in artifacts.

To develop the concept of user experience in HCI, McCarthy et al. introduce the notion of enchantment in interaction design. They describe five sensibilities that support exploration and evaluation in design for enchantment. In this paper, we discuss design for enchantment in light of our approach to design for interaction, called design for meaningful mediation. Based on our experiences from case studies, we argue that ‘considering the whole person with feelings, desires and anxieties’, one of the sensibilities McCarthy et al. formulate, influences the desirability and realisation of the other four sensibilities. By way of case studies, we show how we explored the link between ‘the whole person’ and desired interaction experience in a designerly way. We place enchantment in a context of other interaction experiences and demonstrate possible design techniques relevant to design for interaction experiences, including enchantment.

In this paper we present a design framework to analyze person-product interaction. Its focus is on how the user's action and the product's function are coupled through different types of feedback and feedforward: inherent and augmented information. Instead of using the notion of 'coupling' in an abstract sense, our framework tries to give six practical characteristics for coupling action and information, i.e., time, location, direction, dynamics, modality and expression. Unifying action and information on each of these aspects makes the interaction intuitive. The framework invites and challenges designers to explore couplings leading towards embodied freedom of interaction.

Comments on an article by Marc Hassenzahl (see record 2005-00463-002). The main merit of the article is that offers a guiding research model for empirical studies on beauty in the field of human computer interaction (HCI) and he presents it eloquently. From a product design point of view a few remarks can be made though. First, product designers are interested in tangible, and not virtual, on-screen products. We wonder therefore if and how the results of his studies would hold for products that the user can manipulate, actually touch, take in her hand, and so forth. Second, we think it is essential when dealing with difficult notions such as beauty, goodness and usability to use dynamic measures of users' behavior. This makes the researcher's life extremely complicated. To conclude, we admire the first steps taken on the path of scientific research into beauty, goodness, and usability in interactive products. As always, though, we are impatient. Product designers have to make things now. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved)