Engagement with real-time GPS data presents an obvious avenue towards behaviour change for sustainable mobility choices, as tracking human activity patterns becomes more ubiquitous. However, tracking data in visual form does not invite the quality of engagement that data physicalisations afford. In this blended method experiment, we study bike-commuter habits by combining data tracking, ethnographic studies and data physicalisation. We invited 12 everyday bicycle commuters to track their mobility patterns through an app, to be video shadowed on their daily commute and finally to engage in workshops with different data physicalisations based on the personal mobility data collected. We employ an analytic framework to indicate how the participant engagements match the theories of Flow State, Play Moods and Small Beginnings. The results of the study show that there is a potential for engaging local communities in reflecting on their day-to-day mobility choices through active engagement with data physicalisations. We also suggest that the framework can be used to develop facilitation practices to further enhance data physicalisation engagement and deepen insights.

We propose Theory Instruments, a novel kind of tangible tool, to bring perspective shifts and new vocabulary into design projects and organisations. They aim to bridge disciplinary gaps among practitioners. In this pictorial, we present six Theory Instruments with instructions in cutouts, so practitioners can put them into action. To test the Theory Instruments, we conducted workshops with ten companies from various sectors. With the tangibles, practitioners investigated the interconnectedness of their products, the use contexts, and user experiences. They also unfolded internal interaction design practices. We contribute to Design Anthropology by mapping anthropological theories onto material structures that increase sensitivity to human practices.

While self-tracking data is typically captured real-time in a lived experience, the data is often stored in a manner detached from the context where it belongs. Research has shown that there is a potential to enhance people's lived experiences with data-objects (artifacts representing contextually relevant data), for individual and collective reflections through a physical portrayal of data. This paper expands that research by studying how to design contextually relevant data-objects based on people's needs. We conducted a participatory research project with five households using object theater as a core method to encourage participants to speculate upon combinations of meaningful objects and personal data archives. In this paper, we detail three aspects that seem relevant for designing data-objects: social sharing, contextual ambiguity and interaction with the body. We show how an experience-centric view on data-objects can contribute with the contextual, social and bodily interplay between people, data and objects.

For chronic pain patients, it is a challenge to communicate what their pain feels like - both to friends and relatives and to healthcare professionals. Traditionally doctors employ pain scales (numbers, standardised words, images of facial expressions), but pain scales can be challenging for patients, as chronic pain is experienced individually. They are also difficult to relate to for relatives and professionals, who do not have personal experience of chronic pain. In this pictorial, we present a series of design explorations with tangible materials to offer an alternative for chronic patients to express pain. In collaboration with six patients, we identify eight different types of pain experiences and the material metaphors that the patients may use to express them. We also develop three examples of tailored design artefacts, pain communicators, that can function as 'tangible pain scales' to express pain experiences.

With designers increasingly moving beyond button pushing and flat-screen interaction towards tangible and embodied interaction, techniques for user studies need to develop as well. While ethnographic video studies and ethnomethod-ological analyses are becoming standard in many interaction design projects, it remains a challenge to investigate in detail how people interact with all of their body. Analysis of full-body movement is time consuming, notation techniques are rare, and findings are difficult to share between members of a design team. In this paper we propose tangible video analysis, a method developed to engage people from different backgrounds in collaboratively analysing videos with the help of physical objects. We will present one of these tools, Action Scrabble, for analysing temporal organisation of human actions. We work with a case of skilled forklift truck driving. By backtracking our design research experiments, we will unfold how and why the tangible tool succeeds in engaging designers with varied analysis experience to collaboratively focus on human action structures -- and even find video analysis fun!

In this paper, we present a project in which we explored interactional possibilities for designing a tangible configuration interface as an alternative to conventional input devices in the field of industrial refrigeration maintenance. Based on ethnographic field studies and design workshops, we built three prototypes of configuration interfaces. Each interface was built and used to explore issues that are dealt with by users in their everyday work practice, namely collaborative sense-making of complex system, manipulation of interdependent and fluid digital material, and anticipating future changes through situated learning.

Our current understanding of human interaction with hybrid or augmented environments is very limited. Here we focus on 'tangible interaction', denoting systems that rely on embodied interaction, tangible manipulation, physical representation of data, and embeddedness in real space. This synthesis of prior 'tangible' definitions enables us to address a larger design space and to integrate approaches from different disciplines. We introduce a framework that focuses on the interweaving of the material/physical and the social, contributes to understanding the (social) user experience of tangible interaction, and provides concepts and perspectives for considering the social aspects of tangible interaction. This understanding lays the ground for evolving knowledge on collaboration-sensitive tangible interaction design. Lastly, we analyze three case studies, using the framework, thereby illustrating the concepts and demonstrating their utility as analytical tools.

In our research on tangible user interaction we focus on the design of products that are dedicated to a particular user, task and context. In doing so, we are interested in strengthening the actions side of tangible interaction. Currently, the actions required by electronic products are limited to pushing, sliding and rotating. Yet humans are capable of far more complex actions: Human dexterity is highly refined. This focus on actions requires a reconsideration of the design process. In this paper we propose two design methods that potentially boost the focus on skilled actions in the design of tangible user interaction: The Hands-Only Scenario is a 'close-up version' of the dramatised use scenario. It helps focus effort on what we imagine the hands of the users doing. The Video Action Wall is a technique of 'live post-its' on a (projected) computer screen. Little snippets of action videos running simultaneously help designers understand user actions by the qualities they represent.

In architecture and industrial design, the concept of style plays a major role in education as a way of establishing an understanding of visual design expression. In this article we claim that interaction design can benefit greatly from a similar application of style. It can provide designers with strong visions and a sense of direction in designing new interfaces. In particular, the focus is on solid user interface design (i.e., products with small displays and a limited number of keys) because of the tight coupling of interaction and industrial design. Style theory is explored and an experiment is reported that introduces interaction-style thinking in a user-centered design process in industry. Further, a discussion about parallels between our approach to interaction design and the dominant styles of the twentieth-century, Scandinavian design in particular, is provided.

The authors present a design case in which field design sessions are introduced to bridge the designers' imagination and the users' knowledge of the use context. This approach entailed immersing design teams in the environment of the product-to-be during the conceptual design phase. With a background in the Scandinavian tradition of participatory or cooperative design, the design team observed and talked to users, sketched and produced mock-ups, acted out scenarios, and received user feedback during these field trips. Moving the design into the field provided the team with a number of advantages compared with traditional work in the design studio based on user field observations. Designers achieved direct physical experience of the circumstances and a nonrepresented, nonabstracted introduction to the problems at hand. Through on-the-spot mock-up design and user collaboration, valuable insights into the essence of work and use were gained, and design suggestions embodied by these mock-ups were put on the line. Being aware or unaware of it, these suggestions contained personal assumptions, and preconceived opinions or hypotheses about use and use context, but also contained suggestions of applied technology. The result was new valuable insights toward an understanding of what work really is (or is not) and how it could be supported (or not supported) in the future. It is argued that, to make the most of augmented reality (AR) in the design of professional tools, knowledge of the state of the art of technology is a prerequisite, but is not in itself sufficient. It needs to be complemented by design approaches that (a) provide insight about the users, their work practice, and use context and (b) support designers in aligning their viewpoints with the viewpoints and experienced reality of the people for whom they are designing. This may form a cornerstone in the successful application of emerging technologies. This article discusses existing human-computer interaction approaches aimed at engaging the field in design, contrasts them with field design sessions, reflects on the advantages of applying them, and draws attention to a number of method points.

The "design collaboratorium" is a new usability practice that has been developed in an action research project between three industrial usability labs and a university. The design collaboratorium has been developed as a reaction to the failing capabilities of classical usability methods to cope with ubiquitous technologies. It has borrowed elements from participatory design and developed them further to become useful in large-scale industrial development organizations. The design collaboratorium will be presented through examples from a joint project: a vision project concerning wastewater treatment technology. In light of the case, we will discuss the philosophy underlying the design collaboratorium in further detail: the collaboration between active participants, the role of design artifacts, and the room as a meeting ground. Finally we lay out the working method and propose directions for future usability competencies.