Provocation has long been used in HCI to challenge audiences’ assumptions about technology. However, designers and researchers themselves operate within implicit assumptions that shape the technologies they imagine—invisible constraints that limit what futures we design for. In this paper, we introduce self-provocation as a complementary concept that turns the disruptive impulse inward to make designers’ familiar thinking patterns strange through self-imposed constraints. Our approach builds on avant-garde artistic movements (Surrealism, Oulipo, Fluxus) and critical practices in HCI embracing speculation, anti-solutionism, and non-determinism as epistemic forces, focusing on process over outcomes. We provide a framework dividing self-provocation methods into two levels building on defamiliarization and estrangement. Self-provocation functions analytically—understanding boundaries of current design imaginaries—and generatively—fostering creative friction to explore alternative possibility spaces. We present two self-provocation strategies and the methods we developed for them, and demonstrate through two case studies how these can be implemented in practice.

Decades of online fashion retail and investment in its usability have led to a seemingly refined user experience. Yet, our study shows that female online shoppers, who make up the largest user group, experience a conflicted love-hate relationship when shopping online. Adopting a feminist HCI perspective, we contribute insights from a multi-step qualitative approach involving probes, co-design, iterative prototyping and body maps. We demonstrate that even screen-based website designs are deeply entangled with users’ embodied experiences. Through our analysis, we identify where such designs contribute to heightened emotional labour and negative user experiences. Our work offers concrete design implications centred around inclusivity, the predictive user experience of wearing and caring for garments, and transparency of information. We embody these implications in an interactive prototype and use it to validate our recommendations for a body-centred approach to UX design.

Engaging in rhythmic synchronized activities such as dancing or coordinated exercises is a powerful driver of social connection, as interpersonal entrainment promotes feelings of closeness, empathy, and cooperation. However, in media-based settings such as Social Virtual Reality (SVR), maintaining synchrony is technically challenging. Even modest latency can disrupt the temporal coordination needed for shared rhythm, thereby diminishing social presence, user engagement and the quality of interaction. Our work explores whether synchrony-reinforcing feedback can mitigate latency effects in a dyadic VR rowing task. Participants received real-time visual, audio, or audio-visual feedback: visual feedback was provided through particle effects, and audio feedback through music, both of which intensified with stronger synchronization and diminished as it weakened. Latency was systematically varied. Our findings show that latency, especially higher delays, significantly disrupts coordination and a sense of togetherness. Participants often misattribute these disruptions to personal or interpersonal factors. Audio-visual feedback reduces these effects, supporting smoother interaction and masking symptoms of latency. The task load remains stable across latency levels, but decreases when clear, multimodal feedback is provided. Notably, while closeness remains robust, togetherness deteriorates in the absence of timely, multimodal cues. Our results suggest that latency effects can be partially addressed through perceptual design. Providing multimodal feedback is a key strategy for maintaining synchrony, reducing cognitive effort, and sustaining meaningful social interaction in latency-prone environments.

Shared synchronised activities, such as dancing and singing, can promote social bonding in both physical and virtual settings, but are susceptible to network latencies in mediated environments, such as social virtual reality (VR). Temporal delays can hinder interpersonal entrainment, causing users to feel out of sync, and reduce presence. While prior work has examined how stimulus type and frequency affect synchrony perception, the role of rhythmic interaction, central to many interactive synchronised experiences, remains unexplored. We conducted a within-subject study with 32 participants to systematically investigate how rhythmic interaction shapes synchrony perception of rhythmic audiovisual stimuli in networked VR environments. Motor behaviour and subjective synchrony ratings ($\mathrm{n}=32$) are analysed, complemented by eye-tracking metrics from a quality-controlled subset ($\mathrm{n}=25$). Through controlled stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between audio and video stimuli, we simulate network latency scenarios wshere (1) audio precedes video (as in VR dance environments where music playback is synchronised to a global clock while remote dancer movements appear delayed), and (2) video precedes audio (as in orchestra experiences where a conductor's movements are perceived first, followed by a delayed auditory response from the orchestra). Participants either synchronised hand movements with a virtual avatar or passively observed it across two stimulus frequencies (0.5 Hz and 1 Hz), for both audio- and video-leading offsets. Our results show that rhythmic interaction significantly increases tolerance to audiovisual offsets, shifting the left decision criterion (LDC) by up to 66 ms, the point of subjective synchrony (PSS) by up to 31 ms, and widening the window of subjective synchrony (WSS) by up to 59 ms. These effects suggest that rhythmic interaction can reduce sensitivity to asynchronies in audio-leading scenarios, such as VR dance environments. We also found that temporal offsets influence rhythmic interaction behaviour and confirm that recent findings on the influence of stimulus frequency on PSS and temporal offsets on pupil dilation can to a certain extent be replicated in interactive VR.

Immersive visualisations, that enable spatial, embodied exploration (e.g., XR and physicalisations), have the potential to increase user engagement with data representations. However, which mode of representation offers a higher engagement, and how does the user experience differ? Our work compares a physicalisation to a mobile AR representation of energy consumption sources and CO2 emissions. In a counter-balanced study with 16 participants, we found no significant differences in perceived user engagement, except for higher scores in “perceived usability’’. The physicalisation was considered ‘real’ and intuitive, the AR representation technical and precise. Most participants preferred the physicalisation and felt more ‘connected’ with it. We also analysed patterns of how people moved around the representations, and found no differences between conditions. Despite people being able to touch the physicalisation, this was barely made use of—thereby turning both conditions into visual exploration. We discuss what rationale participants provided for barely touching and discuss implications.

In this studio, we will explore the potential of inflatables for tangible interfaces by designing and fabricating inflatable props using a highly versatile and low-cost technique.The WireShape prototyping process can be used by researchers, makers, designers, and artists for the rapid and reliable manufacturing of inflatables.Based on our previous work [2], we introduce an accessible method for creating inflatable user interface elements using hand-made heatsealing tools made from aluminum wire, applied to tpu-coated fabrics using a widely available T-shirt heat press.The resulting inflatable objects can be used as tangible artifacts for design and experience prototyping, or for the production of research prototypes.The proposed workshop will introduce participants to this method, focusing on the practical aspects of creating inflatables, and will enable participants to explore the potential of inflatables for unique and engaging interactions in the context of interaction design and data physicalisation.Through hands-on activities, we will demonstrate how to sketch and create inflatables for tangible interfaces and discuss their benefits, limitations, and the possible integration of sensor technology.As a studio at TEI25, our goal is to facilitate a space where HCI researchers and designers can collaborate, create, and discuss opportunities and challenges.

As the datafication of our personal lives increases, researchers have started to critique what we consider as data. Where data are often seen from a reductionist perspective –as neutral numbers and graphs– theory suggests that data are messy, subjective, and pertaining to more than the human alone. They are experienced and lived with, something which is often not accounted for in personal data. To explore what people themselves consider data, sixteen interlocutors participated in a cultural probe study where they visually documented what they considered data in their everyday lives. Our analysis indicates that data can be disciplinary, social, and extend beyond ourselves, incorporating more-than-human aspects. Data are often regarded for entertainment, work, and wellbeing purposes. As interlocutors actively engaged and lived with data, we end the pictorial with a working definition of personal data, which acknowledges people's active roles in their data creation.

Most physical data representations rely on vision only and miss the opportunity of making people physically experience data. This work introduces ‘A Fair Game’: a narrative sensification that uses story-telling and embodied interaction to provide data insight. A Fair Game is a two-player horse race installation representing passport power, where people pull on a rope to move their horse. People randomly draw a high- or low-ranking passport which determines the horse’s speed, so either a lot or little physical effort is needed to win the race. The installation was deployed at an exhibition for two days, where we conducted interviews with fifteen people. Findings indicate that people’s embodied interaction and the visible unfairness of the game contributed to emotional engagement. Participant’s felt frustration and empathy, which facilitated space for discussions regarding the topic. Our work shows the potential of kinesthetic and emotional engagement, and introduces the concept of narrative sensification.

This paper explores (1) the role of metaphors in physical data representations and (2) the concept of tacit data: implicitly known data which are hard to uncover. In a semester course with twenty-three students, five teams explored how to represent self-chosen ‘tacit data’ in a visualisation, haptification, and dynamic physicalisation. Throughout these phases, our notion of tacit data evolved, resulting in a proposed working definition. Moreover, we noticed that metaphors played an increasingly important role. Based on analysis of students’ work and interviews with them, we found that tacit data and physical data representations need metaphors. For haptifications and physicalisations, metaphors help to circumvent limitations, curate data, and communicate to the audience. As tacit data were seen as ‘soft’ and difficult to quantify, metaphors made the data workable. Furthermore, tacit data benefit from physical representations, which offer further dimensions to represent the feeling and intimate aspects of data.

Inflatable interfaces are so far predominantly used for creating shape-change. There has not been much work yet on creating tactile textures in inflatables. We present a pneumatic approach for soft and malleable surfaces that can change texture. We describe the pattern design, the fabrication and actuation approach, and illustrate how one texture inflatable prototype was used for lab experiments, and indicate potential application areas.

We present pneuCNTRL, a system providing a programmable, precise air pressure control in a multi-channel setup with interactive actuated, soft and malleable inflatables which we used for studies on data physicalization. pneuCNTRL is a compact, easy-to-use, and affordable solution that allows researchers to quickly and accurately control shape and haptic properties of inflatable structures in HCI experimental studies. We describe its design and functionality, and summarize our experiences with its use in research and teaching. We also discuss potential benefits of pneuCNTRL, such as its ability to support a wide range of experimental designs and the exploration of novel research questions.

Although physical artifacts that represent data have been used for centuries, the research field—known as data physicalization—has only recently gained traction. Compared to data visualization, there is no established vocabulary for analyzing and discussing the properties of physicalizations. Through a grounded analysis of examples and literature, we propose a comprehensive design vocabulary, which consist of three separate, but connected parts: explicit variables , implicit properties , and consequential aspects . Explicit variables build on visual variables known from visualization and extend it to account for physicalization’s multi-modal nature. Implicit properties concern elements which are central to the design intention and user experience of physicalizations, yet are not a result of “explicit” encoding strategies. Finally, consequential aspects refer to unintentional effects of design decisions, that influence how a physicalization is experienced. Our work illustrates how physicalizations incorporate opportunities and challenges that are not afforded in other data representations, such as embodiment and imagined touch . With this, we contribute to generating theory on physicalization. Our design vocabulary can support (1) creators through informing their design processes and highlighting design strategies, (2) educators, and (3) academics and practitioners to analyse existing physicalizations, and reflect on the impact of design decisions on interpretation and experience.

The integration process of international students into a new culture and academic environment poses significant challenges to their physical and mental well-being. Through co-design sessions with international students, we investigated which factors international students prioritize for wearables that could support them in this context. Through the sessions, we saw a shift from addressing problems and focusing on a solution product, to a more comprehensive perspective, considering factors such as affordability, aesthetics, sustainability, placement, the importance of real-time connectivity, seamless integration into daily life, customization, and efficient power management. Our insights contribute to creating wearables that mitigate the challenges faced by international students.

Where is my dog? Where does my outdoor cat sleep at night? Where does my dog go when I am not at home? Various mobile technology applications offer means for staying connected with pets. However, the specific requirements for location-tracking technology via pet wearables or indoor video-technologies remain an under-researched area. Our research explored pet location-tracking technology through co-creation sessions, regarding what benefits pet owners can foresee for their own mental comfort. While only one out of 11 participants actually used such technology, all anticipated that pet location tracking tech could increase pet owners’ well-being. We here discuss the results of a follow-up 23-participant survey, which revealed privacy concerns, financial investment and pet’s comfort as well as the type of pet, lifestyle and other already used technologies to be the key factors for adopting pet location tracking technology. These findings are further compared with our participants’ initial expectations.

Tension headache and resulting migraine are an ubiquitous medical condition that impairs the lives of affected individuals. A potential solution to support therapy could use biofeedback. We developed an EMG-based (electromyography) prototype that monitors muscle activity. Realized as a non-permanent electronic tattoo, it indicates muscle hypertension through vibration feedback. Interviews with medical experts confirmed the potential utility of this idea, and provided advice on its design. An exploratory qualitative pilot study explored the potential for such live feedback on muscle tension, and whether realisation as a non-permanent electrical tattoo is suitable. Our small-scale study shows that this approach is promising for alleviating these conditions.

Any active entity that shares space with people is interpreted as a social actor. Based on this notion, we explore how robots that integrate functional utility with a social role and character can integrate meaningfully into daily practice. Informed by interviews and observations, we designed a zoomorphic floor cleaning robot which playfully interacts with care home residents affected by dementia. A field study shows that playful interaction can facilitate the introduction of utilitarian robots in care homes, being nonthreatening and easy to make sense of. Residents previously reacted with distress to a Roomba robot, but were now amused by and played with our cartoonish cat robot or simply tolerated its presence. They showed awareness of the machine-nature of the robot, even while engaging in pretend-play. A playful approach to the design of functional robots can thus explicitly conceptualize such robots as social actors in their context of use.

Technology research for neurodivergent conditions is largely shaped by research aims which privilege neuro-normative outcomes. As such, there is an epistemic imbalance in meaning making about these technologies. We conducted a critical literature review of technologies designed for people with ADHD, focusing on how ADHD is framed, the research aims and approaches, the role of people with ADHD within the research process, and the types of systems being developed within Computing and HCI. Our analysis and review is conducted explicitly from an insider perspective, bringing our perspectives as neurodivergent researchers to the topic of technologies in the context of ADHD. We found that 1) technologies are largely used to ‘mitigate’ the experiences of ADHD which are perceived as disruptive to neurotypical standards of behaviour; 2) little HCI research in the area invites this population to co-construct the technologies or to leverage neurodivergent experiences in the construction of research aims; and 3) participant resistance to deficit frames can be read within the researchers’ own accounts of participant actions. We discuss the implications of this status quo for disabled people and technology researchers alike, and close with a set of recommendations for future work in this area.

The workshop investigates two major boundaries within HRI design and research: Firstly, we aim to cross the boundaries of engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration of such divergent disciplines as engineering, design, psychology, philosophy and sociology. Secondly, we aim to cross the boundaries of HRI design and social contexts of use - often referred to as ‘real world’ environments. This endeavor is not new, however we aim for approaching these two boarders of HRI research and design more systematically, e.g. by providing new methodological impulses. The idea of “configuring” has a long tradition in Science and Technology Studies (STS) to describe how potential users and use cases are shaped and in turn reshaped (configured) throughout technology design - be it explicitly or accidentally. Given HRI is becoming deeper integrated in ‘real world’ contexts, such as public spaces, homes and care facilities, we argue for the need for a re-configuration. This includes a critical reflection of material, procedural and methodological implications that shape future users within HRI design practices - for and together with people.

We contribute to an improved understanding of how physical multisensory data representations are experienced and how specific modalities affect the user experience (UX). We investigate how people make sense of Birdbox, a crossmodal data representation that employs combined haptic-audio, audio-visual, or visual-haptic output for data about birds. Findings indicate that participants preferred haptic output for the bodily experience it triggered. Participants further created their own mappings between data and modality; haptic was mapped to aggression, and audio to speed. Especially with (soft) haptic output, Birdbox was experienced as a living entity. This can also be seen in participants’ bodily interactions, holding Birdbox as if it were a small bird. We contribute to a better understanding of the UX of different modalities in multisensory data representations, highlight strengths of the haptic modality, and of metaphorical understandings of modalities.

Self-tracking technologies have long promised to enhance our well-being. However, our initial work and that of others show that most of these technologies focus on data, not the user. Based on interviews, development of mood boards, and the creation of a research product, we propose an alternative approach to self-tracking: re-humanising self-tracking technologies. Our work shows that feelings play an important role with data, that data are temporal, and associated with work and utility. We interpret four design criteria, which are applied in the creation of Frankie: a human-centred tracking device which records both quantitative (number of activities) and qualitative (perceived weight of the activity and spoken reflections) data to foster self-reflection. Through this design case we add to the discussion on re-imagining self-tracking technologies to go beyond data-centric artefacts.

The number of connected devices in-home has increased rapidly, and connected solutions in smart homes do not yet cover needs of all inhabitants. We explored future interfaces that blend seamlessly with the home interior in co-creation sessions with people from diverse co-living situations. The results contribute to acknowledging a home’s complexity considering shared households as places where many needs meet and possibly contradict each other. Based on findings from three workshop sessions with a total of 12 participants, we present two themes of relevance when designing for smart homes. Covering both, a smart home can adapt to users’ needs and become valuable members of multi-people households while maintaining the characteristics of a home for all individuals.

This paper gives an overview of our work-in-progress prototype of a textile-pneumatic force-feedback system that augments the user-interaction on touch-sensor strips with interactive tactile cues. Air-pressure inside a shape-changing textile actuator is dynamically modulated, to create a perceivable pinch-like impression at the user’s fingertip. This dynamic pneumotactile pinch can be leveraged as a tangible output modality for interaction design. The soft actuators are driven by a pneumatic control system that adjusts the pneumatic pressure in response to the finger position. We have explored different textile air-chamber layouts to achieve tactile feedback and provide a preliminary discussion of their tactile capabilities and design patterns. We further give a brief overview of three different pneumatic control system architectures and their underlying tactile pressure profiles used to operate the actuators to create different types of tactile sensations. A preliminary discussion of the capabilities, challenges, and limitations of our system is also provided.

A growing body of work focuses on physicalisations based on personal, everyday data. Despite growing interest, little is known about how to educate people on their creation. We designed a teaching method of ’Data Diaries’, which consists of five representation assignments that move from visualising to physicalising personal data. The Data Diaries were used in a semester project, with the aim of creating an interactive physicalisation. We analysed the Data Diaries, written reports, and participant interviews. Our analysis shows that people need to overcome the challenge of using materiality to communicate data, which happens in four stages. Moreover, the materiality made participants realise that physicalisations do not focus on efficiency and accuracy, but on the story of the data, by referring to its origin, use of personal mappings, and reduction. As physicalisations blur the line between quantitative and qualitative, designing them engenders a change in our notion of ’data’.

sssnake is a soft toy that allows multi-user play over distance as well as single users playing alone. It has a haptic interface and can connect children (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic) while avoiding the usage of screen-based media. It combines social interaction inspired from online gaming with a playful way to learn about music and instruments. We present a handcrafted prototype manufactured from e-textiles, wool and grape seeds. The sssnake prototype was evaluated in a user study with ten children aged between one and eight years. The study showed that online-connected soft toys can be an extension to traditional possibilities of socializing and play.

A growing body of work in InfoVis explores its user experience (UX), however, emotions remain underexplored. Our study reveals barriers for investigating personal connection and emotional reaction to visualisations. This provides an explanation for why the role of emotions so far received little attention in InfoVis. Twenty-four participants viewed two traditional data visualisations, answered UX questionnaires for each, and were interviewed about their experience. Our findings show that traditional visualisations are seen as ‘just a graph’, that represents neutral information. Participants referred to aesthetics, legibility, and usability, instead of the actual topic. Moreover, to make sense of the data, emotions have to be separated from it. We found four possible explanations underlying this belief and argue that a form of post-hoc rationalisation takes place, which obscures people’s initial connections and affective responses to visualisations. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for future research on the UX of visualisations.

We present a video-analysis study of museum visitors’ interactions at two tangible interactive exhibits in a transport museum. Our focus is on groups’ social and shared interactions, in particular how exhibit setup and structure influence collaboration patterns. Behaviors at the exhibits included individuals focusing beyond their personal activity towards companions’ interaction, adults participating via physical interaction, and visitors taking opportunities to interact when companions moved between sections of the exhibit or stepped back from interaction. We demonstrate how exhibits’ physical configuration and interactive control engendered behavioral patterns. Systematic analysis reveals how different configurations (concerning physical-spatial hardware and interactive software) distribute control differently amongst visitors. We present four mechanisms for how control can be distributed at an interactive installation: functional, temporal, physical and indirect verbal. In summary, our work explores how mechanisms that distribute control influence patterns of shared interaction with the exhibits and social interaction between museum visitor companions.

Robots are predominantly thought of as monolithic, unitary actors: they are almost always designed as having a clearly defined body. We rethink this concept of a unified and coherently embodied robot with the example context of elderly care. We explore alternative design spaces for robots in care that open up new modes of interaction for residents and caregivers. We present design studies that explore this notion based on the development of a plant-watering robotic ensemble. The ensemble consists of various elements that inform interacting persons about the robot’s task and its role in a storytelling or poetic way. We show how we further explored this idea of a ‘robot as theatre’ in two different configurations – one agentic and one diorama – and a version that integrates feedback from focus groups with care experts.

Given the material nature of data physicalization, their creators need to make many design decisions, including material choices and scale. Our study explores the impact of scale in physicalization, motivated by the assumption that size can affect user experience. We created two different physicalizations (for the same dataset) in three sizes each, and evaluated the resulting six objects with a questionnaire approach and interviews. Our findings highlight that scale needs to be chosen wisely given its impact on representation legibility (ease of viewing and understanding) and affordances for interaction. We discuss factors to take into account when designing large-scale physicalizations and in further research on the potential role of scale in physicalizaton. In particular, we argue that for large-scale physicalizations, scale should matter and communicate meaning, for instance, supporting an intuitive understanding of magnitudes, or a specific experience. Thus, scale needs to be an explicit design decision, that interacts with other design parameters.

We investigate whether presenting data in a VR visualization or as a physicalization impacts understanding and recollection. Two equivalent representations of the same data set, one in physical form and one in VR, were created. Participants answered understanding questions while they had access to the model, and were subsequently asked about the data after the model was removed. We recorded time needed to answer understanding questions and correctness rates for recollection questions. The results favour the conclusion that the virtual representation and the technical VR setup significantly inhibit participants’ ability to work with the data set. Reflecting on our study setup and participants’ comments, we discuss recommendations for future studies aiming at a systematic and comprehensive comparison of the differences in interacting with purely virtual and with physical data representations.

Deploying wearable technologies in the performing arts not only concerns costume wearers but affects further stakeholders whose work is impacted by the interactive effects or who help maintain the technology. Beyond the wearer, literature neglects how these other stakeholders engage with interactive costumes, though a performance production is based on the contribution of many parties. We conducted a longitudinal study to examine how stakeholders of a youth ballet production experience and appropriate interactive costuming. Our findings suggest that user experiences vary according to stakeholders' closeness to the costume, background and taste, the costume interaction mode and social environment. We expand existing models of technology appropriation with two novel technology relations: professional reserve and polite indifference. Based on these, we suggest integration into existing practices, to design for the show, and create positive experiences to incorporate interactive costumes in the performing arts and discuss relevance for other professional fields.

Millions of arguments are shared on the web. Future information systems will be able to exploit this valuable knowledge source and to retrieve arguments relevant and convincing to our specific need---all with an interface as intuitive as asking your friend "Why ...". Although recent advancements in argument mining, conversational search, and voice recognition have put such systems within reach, many questions remain open, especially on the interface side. In this regard the paper at hand presents the first study of argument search behavior. We conduct an online-survey and a focused user study, putting emphasis on what people expect argument search to be like, rather than on what current first-generation systems provide. Our participants expected to use voice-based argument search mostly at home, but also together with others. Moreover, they expect such search systems to provide rich information on retrieved arguments, such as the source, supporting evidence, and background knowledge on entities or events mentioned. In observed interactions with a simulated system we found that the participants adapted their search behavior to different types of tasks, and that up-front categorization of the retrieved arguments is perceived as helpful if this is short. Our findings are directly applicable to the design of argument search systems, not only voice-based ones.

Research on product experience has a history in investigating the sensory and emotional qualities of interacting with objects. However, this notion has not been fully expanded to the design space of co-designing smart objects. In this paper, we report on findings from a series of co-design workshops where we used the toolkit Loaded Dice in conjunction with a card set that aimed to support participants in reflecting the sensory qualities of domestic smart objects. We synthesize and interpret findings from our study to help illustrate how the workshops supported co-designers in creatively ideating concepts for emotionally valuable smart objects that better connect personal inputs with the output of smart objects. Our work contributes a case example of how a co-design approach that emphasizes situated sensory exploration can be effective in enabling co-designers to ideate concepts of idiosyncratic smart objects that closely relate to the characteristics of their domestic living situations.

In the 1920s, Oskar Schlemmer, artist in the Bauhaus movement, created the Triadic Ballet costumes. These re-strict movement of dancers, creating new expressions. In-spired by this, we designed an interactive wire costume. It restricts lower body movements, and emphasizes arm movements spurring LED-light 'sparks' and 'waves' wired in a tutu-like costume. The Wire Costume was introduced to a dancer who found that an unusual bond emerged be-tween her and the costume. We discuss how sensory altera-tion (sight, kinesthetic awareness and proprioception) and bodily training to adjust to the new soma, can result in nov-el, evocative forms of expression. The interactive costume can foster a certain mood, introduce feelings, and even embody a whole character -- only revealed once worn and danced. We describe a design exploration combining cul-tural and historical research, interviews with experts and material explorations that culminated in a novel prototype.

Research in sonification and physicalization have expanded data representation techniques to include senses beyond the visual. Yet, little is known of how people interpret and make sense of haptic and sonic compared to visual representations. We have conducted two phenomenologically oriented comparative studies (applying the Repertory Grid and the Micro-phenomenological interview technique) to gather in-depth accounts of people's interpretation and experience of different representational modalities that included auditory, haptic and visual variations. Our findings show a rich characterization of these different representational modalities: our visually oriented representations engage through their familiarity, accuracy and easy interpretation, while our representations that stimulated auditory and haptic interpretation were experienced as more ambiguous, yet stimulated an engaging interpretation of data that involved the whole body. We describe and discuss in detail participants' processes of making sense and generating meaning using the modalities' unique characteristics, individually and as a group. Our research informs future research in the area of multimodal data representations from both a design and methodological perspective.

Although public displays are increasingly being deployed in everyday situations, they are still mostly used as auto-active information sources. Adding interactivity can help to attract and engage users. We report on the design and in-the-wild evaluation of an interactive advert for a public display in a tourist information center. We evaluate and compare 3 different variants - non-interactive, interaction using body tracking, and interaction using personal mobile devices - with respect to attracting the attention and interaction from passersby. We further compare these variants with an iterated version of the body tracking system with an extended tracking area. Our findings include an unexpected reluctance of passersby to use their mobile device in public, and the increased interactive area for body interaction resulting in increased engagement and spontaneous multi-user interaction, while removing the so-called 'landing effect'. Based on our findings, we suggest guidelines for interactive adverts on public displays.

Capturing and describing the multi-faceted experiences autistic children have with technologies provides a unique research challenge. Approaches based on pragmatist notions of experience, which mostly rely on empathy, are particularly limited if used alone. To address this we have developed an approach that combines Actor-Network Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis. Drawing on this approach, we discuss the experiences autistic children had with technologies resulting from the collaborative design process in the OutsideTheBox project. We construct a holistic picture of the experience by drawing on diverse data sources ranging from interviews to log-data, and most importantly, the first-hand perspective of autistic children. In four case studies, we demonstrate how this approach allowed us to develop unique individual and structural insights into the experiences of autistic children with technology.

We present a user study of the mock-up for a learning environment on electro-mobility, based on tracking of physical interactions and projected augmentation. We discuss observations and interviews with participants that were led through a task scenario. Our insights highlight user needs in an educational context. There is generally high acceptance for augmented reality in experimentation environments, but issues concerning user guidance and system concept are critical for practical experimental education in schools and universities. We describe the most important decisions for further development. Frequently, these concern questions about degrees of freedom - on the part of users as well as the system.

Humans have represented data in many forms for thousands of years, yet the main sensory channel we use to perceive these representations today still remains exclusive to vision. Recent developments now offer us opportunities to perceive data through different levels and combinations of sensory modalities. In this article, we survey the state-of-the-art in data representation that requires more than one sensory channel to fully interpret and understand the data. Drawing on techniques and theories adapted from Thematic Analysis and Prototype Theory, we analysed 154 examples of multisensory data representations to establish a design space along three axes: use of modalities, representation intent and human–data relations. We frame the discussion around presenting how a selection of examples, chosen from the collection, fit into the design space. This not only informs our own research but can also draw the attention of the human–computer interaction and Design Research communities to aspects of data representation that have hitherto been either ill-defined or underexplored. We conclude by discussing key research challenges, which emerged from the exploration of the design space and point out future research topics.

This article presents a video-based field study of the Reactable, a tabletop tangible user interface (TUI) for music performance, in a hands-on science centre. The goal was to investigate visitors’ social interactions in a public setting. We describe liminality and cross-group interaction, both synchronous with fluid transitions and overlaps in use between groups and asynchronous. Our findings indicate the importance of: (i) facilitating smooth transitions and overlaps between groups and (ii) supporting not only synchronous but also asynchronous group interaction. We discuss the lessons learned on how best to enable liminal situations in the design of interactive tabletops and TUIs for social interaction and particularly collaborative tangible music in public museum settings.

We present findings from an interview-based study of the pervasive mobile multiplayer game Ingress. Our study focuses on how boundaries between (1) everyday life and play and (2) 'real' and game space blur in pervasive gaming. We present findings on how the game is integrated into everyday life and affects players' mobility patterns, and on how players experience the relation between real world and game world, the game 'bleeding' into the everyday (blurring boundaries at least partially) even though it is not explicitly experienced as hybrid. Furthermore we discuss how notions of play versus ordinary life still affect some players, and how some players are willing to take and create risks and treat the game as consequential in their everyday interactions with (enemy) players. This further blurs the boundaries of the magic circle, but also creates tensions between casual and serious styles of play. Our findings add to the empirical literature on pervasive games by focusing on player experience in a large-scale pervasive game.

This work explores an emerging category of interfaces: pneumatibles -- interactive, pneumatically driven actuator/sensor elements, made from pliable materials and inspired by soft-robotics principles -- and their potential for the design of tangible interfaces with integrated pneumotactile feedback. We present a novel pneumatic control-system, specifically designed for pneumotactile applications and a case study of a pneumatically actuated, pressure sensitive button pneumatible capable of providing tactile feedback. Our work further contributes to a better understanding of the underlying technical parameters (i.e. air-pressure, material properties, dimensions, actuation-sequences, etc.) that determine the design space of soft and pliable actuators for providing distinct tactile stimuli and enabling expressive control. We provide insights learned from the process of constructing and controlling pneumotactile actuators and present a preliminary user study, focused on participants' ability to identify pneumotactile feedback patterns. Finally, implications for the design of pneumotactile interfaces and the transfer of principles from soft-robotics to HCI are discussed.

A common issue in gesture elicitation studies is that participants are influenced by interaction with digital products, imitating touchscreen gestures or WIMP icons. In our study, we adapted and experimentally tested two of Morris' et al.'s suggestions for reducing legacy bias: increased production of gestures and covert kinaesthetic priming. Our findings indicate that the practical effectiveness of these strategies might be limited, given we only found medium effect sizes and a wide variance between participants that overshadows any effects. Our work contributes to reflection on, and indirectly, by experimentally testing potential variations, to future improvements of the gesture elicitation method.

Humans have represented data in many forms for thousands of years, yet the main sensory channel we use to perceive these representations today still remains largely exclusive to sight. Recent developments, such as advances in digital fabrication, microcontrollers, actuated tangibles, and shape-changing interfaces offer new opportunities to encode data in physical forms and have stimulated the emergence of 'Data Physicalization' as a research area.

Based on case studies from a heritage/museum context, I present and illustrate the notion of “spatio-contextual embedding,” which conceptualizes installation designs that augment real objects and environments while keeping these primary focuses of attention. Key for this “embeddedness” is that interaction is contextualized within a meaningful setting, creating relationships between system and environment. While retaining a focus on original objects or environments, it supports user's active engagement and sense making by inviting, enticing, or forcing them to draw connections. At the heart of this is “indexing”: mindful acts of referencing back-and-forth between here and there, connecting objects or representations. Analysis of case studies provides a repertoire of examples of “indexing,” and examples for high- and low-tech installation designs that foster drawing of connections. Two core values for design underpin the argument: (1) primacy of real objects and environments and (2) supporting human agency. The case examples highlight how technological arrangements may support or hinder indexing activity. This is condensed into potential design strategies. This article contributes to design knowledge on design for human agency, sense making, and mindful engagement with our environment. “Indexing” is relevant beyond the heritage setting domain, as part of HCI design in support of human agency.

Information visualization has become a popular tool to facilitate sense-making, discovery and communication in a large range of professional and casual contexts. However, evaluating visualizations is still a challenge. In particular, we lack techniques to help understand how visualizations are experienced by people. In this paper we discuss the potential of the Elicitation Interview technique to be applied in the context of visualization. The Elicitation Interview is a method for gathering detailed and precise accounts of human experience. We argue that it can be applied to help understand how people experience and interpret visualizations as part of exploration and data analysis processes. We describe the key characteristics of this interview technique and present a study we conducted to exemplify how it can be applied to evaluate data representations. Our study illustrates the types of insights this technique can bring to the fore, for example, evidence for deep interpretation of visual representations and the formation of interpretations and stories beyond the represented data. We discuss general visualization evaluation scenarios where the Elicitation Interview technique may be beneficial and specify what needs to be considered when applying this technique in a visualization context specifically.

In this paper, we discuss the requirements and critical challenges for creating and staging interactive costumes in the theatre. Different to other types of performance, theatre costumes are secondary to acting. Our investigations are based on two practice-based case studies: a self-directed design research within a student project, and a collaboration with a local theatre house, where interactive costume elements were developed in a real-life setting. These reveal requirements and challenges for the design process as well as the effective staging of interactive costumes, the biggest challenge being how to integrate these into existing structures of traditional theatre houses, and requirements for the costumes themselves. Because interactive costumes integrate technological features and traditional analogue crafts, they require interdisciplinary collaboration and transcend established boundaries between departments in theatre houses, challenging established work processes and structures.

This paper discusses the design process of VR/Urban's public tangible interface SMSlingshot, a real-time system for urban interventions on Media Façades, which we have exhibited in the last few years around the world. In this case study we investigate how the design collaboration between technologists and industrial designers contributed to the success of the urban intervention. The design process of this 'product' has many DIY aspects, with professional industrial designers and technologists becoming expert amateurs, often dealing with problems that pushed them outside of their professional comfort zone. Don't be afraid of being an amateur!

This paper introduces two devices; H3 ('Hydrogen cubed') and a Solar Radiation Dowsing Rod, both crossmodal data-driven artefacts that represent live data streams using haptic-auditory feedback. The motivation for creating these artefacts was to offer casual users the opportunity to interact with data that would normally only be explored by experts, with the aim of stimulating curiosity, intrigue and awareness. In addition to the description of the devices, we discuss the concept behind their design and initial observations from a user study.

There has been little research on how interactions with tabletop and Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) by groups of users change over time. In this article, we investigate the challenges and opportunities of a tabletop tangible interface based on constructive building blocks. We describe a long-term lab study of groups of expert musicians improvising with the Reactable, a commercial tabletop TUI for music performance. We examine interaction, focusing on interface , tangible , musical, and social phenomena. Our findings reveal a practice-based learning between peers in situated contexts, and new forms of participation, all of which is facilitated by the Reactable's tangible interface, if compared to traditional musical ensembles. We summarise our findings as a set of design considerations and conclude that construction processes on interactive tabletops support learning by doing and peer learning, which can inform constructivist approaches to learning with technology.

We contribute to an understanding of how well lab-based user studies can help us to anticipate how a system will be used in 'the wild'. We analyze and compare data from lab-based user studies of prototype museum installations and the subsequent deployment of these systems in a museum. While the user study was successful in identifying usability issues, social behavior patterns in the museum, in particular between caregivers and children, differed in several aspects between the settings. Our analysis highlights influences on usage and behavior patterns: the physical and structural setup, the user study creating a focused activity, and the demand characteristics of a user study.

In this paper we describe our experience of designing and running a user evaluation of early prototypes of digital installations prior to their deployment in a new national heritage museum. Children, their parents, siblings and friends were invited to participate in the study, We focus on the effectiveness of using children's drawings to elicit responses from the child participants. Drawings provided us with insight into children's experience of the installations. Moreover, they proved a useful entry point for interviewing young children, avoiding some of the known challenges in this.

Designing interactive applications for Media Facades is a challenging task. Architectural sized largescale screens can result in unbalanced installations, and meaningful interaction is easily overshadowed by the drastic size of the display. In this paper we reflect on urban technology interventions by analyzing their spatial configuration in relation to the structuring of interaction. We outline basic categories and offer a new terminology to describe these interactive situations designed for the built environment.

A prevalent assumption behind interface approaches that employ physical means of interaction is that this leverages users' prior knowledge from the real world. This paper scrutinizes the assumption that this knowledge can be seamlessly transferred to computer-augmented situations. TEI needs design strategies that acknowledge the hybrid nature of our systems. A change of focus is advocated: from support of intuitive use to the design of seamful mappings and the support of reflection and learning to enable appropriation and a better understanding of the systems we use.

Children are not necessarily motivated to collaborate if no common ground can be found. In this paper, we present t-vote, a system supporting children's decision making. To encourage collaboration in a museum's context, we employ tangible pawns on a tabletop interface and implicitly script the decision making process of children. We describe the system design, our design process, and rationale.

In this paper we describe the design concept, prototype development, and initial findings for a mobile guide supporting serendipitous exploration of a city. The system will allow a tourist to freely explore a new city, while providing them with peace of mind to not accidentally walk past attractions they desire to see. We have developed a proximity model and vibration patterns for alerts, and devised ways of mitigating tradeoffs between battery use and location accuracy.

I present a card brainstorming exercise that transforms a conceptual tangible interaction framework into a tool for creative dialogue and discuss the experiences made in using it. Ten sessions with this card game demonstrate the frameworks' versatility and utility. Observation and participant feedback highlight the value of a provocative question format and of the metaphor of a card game.

This paper discusses observations of visitor interactions around a museum installation, focusing on how physical setup and shape of two variants of the installation, a telescope-like viewer and a barrier-free screen, shaped visitor experiences and interactions around and with the system. The analysis investigates contextual embedding, and how the two system variants affected people's ability of sharing the experience and negotiating use.

Tabletop and tangible interfaces are often described in terms of their support for shared access to digital resources. However, it is not always the case that collaborators want to share and help one another. In this paper we detail a video-analysis of a series of prototyping sessions with children who used both cardboard objects and an interactive tabletop surface. We show how the material qualities of the digital interface and physical objects affect the kinds of bodily strategies adopted by children to stop others from accessing them. We discuss how children fight for and maintain control of physical versus digital objects in terms of embodied interaction and what this means when designing collaborative applications for shareable interfaces.

An assumption behind new interface approaches that employ physical means of interaction is that these can leverage users’ prior knowledge from the real world, making them intuitive or ‘natural’ to use. This paper presents a user study of Tangible Augmented Reality, which shows that physical input tools can invite a wide variety of interaction behaviours and raise unmatched expectations about how to interact. Children played with interactive sequences in an augmented book using physical paddles to control the main characters. Our analysis focuses on how knowledge and skills that children have from the physical world succeed or fail to apply in the interaction with this application. We found that children expected the digital augmentations to behave and react analogous to physical 3D objects, encouraged by the ability to act in 3D space and the (digital) visual feedback. The affordances of the paddles as physical interaction devices invited actions that the system could not detect or interpret. In effect, children often struggled to understand what it was in their actions that made the system react.

Multi-touch surfaces are becoming increasingly popular. An assumed benefit is that they can facilitate collaborative interactions in co-located groups. In particular, being able to see another's physical actions can enhance awareness, which in turn can support fluid interaction and coordination. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence or measures to support these claims. We present an analysis of different aspects of awareness in an empirical study that compared two kinds of input: multi-touch and multiple mice. For our analysis, a set of awareness indices was derived from the CSCW and HCI literatures, which measures both the presence and absence of awareness in co-located settings. Our findings indicate higher levels of awareness for the multi-touch condition accompanied by significantly more actions that interfere with each other. A subsequent qualitative analysis shows that the interactions in this condition were more fluid and that interference was quickly resolved. We suggest that it is more important that resources are available to negotiate interference rather than necessarily to attempt to prevent it.

In this paper we present a device to support the communication of couples in long-distance relationships. While a synchronous exchange of factual information over distance is supported by telephone, e-mail and chat-systems, the transmission of nonverbal aspects of communication is still unsatisfactory. Videocalls let us see the partners' facial expression in real time. However, to experience a more intimate conversation physical closeness is needed. Stroking while holding hands is a special and emotional gesture for couples. Hence, we developed a device that enables couples to exchange the physical gesture of stroking regardless of distance and location. The device allows both sending and receiving. A user test supported our concept and provided new insights for future development.

This paper introduces a device that creates remote intimacy by the use of two rings named "united-pulse". Each ring can measure the wearer's heartbeat and send it to the partner's ring. Hereby, artificial corporeality is created between the couple. By means of a working prototype, united-pulse has been successfully tested. Among the 28 participants the prototype has attracted large interest. Through the heartbeat -- the essential vital sign -- a feeling of being very close to the partner is provided. Touching the ring allows a small moment of intimacy in situations where emotional support is needed.

We have observed children reading an augmented book aimed at early literacy education. We explored how children aged six to seven experience and interact with these novel instructional media. We here focus on issues arising from the tangibility of interface elements, the integration of physical and digital elements, on-screen and paper elements, and of text and interactive sequences.

A key challenge in co-designing UbiComp is that users may have limited understanding or experience of these technologies. While the value of situated co-design activities for promoting understanding is known, the role of time is less well researched. Here we describe and reflect on a range of co-design activities carried out with the curators of an historic English manor house to create novel visitor tours. We show how an ensemble of situated co-design activities over time led to the unfolding of user understanding around issues of content, technology and user experience, in turn leading to a progressive re-imagining of practice. This points to the importance of time and variety of in-situ activities to help people engage as co-designers in creating novel UbiComp-enabled experiences.

Fieldtrips, traditionally associated with science, history and geography teaching, have long been used to support children’s learning by allowing them to engage with environments first-hand. Recently, ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) has been used to enhance fieldtrips in these educational areas by augmenting environments with a range of instruments, devices and sensors. However, the sorts of interaction design that UbiComp makes possible have the potential not just to enhance the value of educational techniques in known application areas, but also to expand the application of those techniques into new areas of curriculum. We report on a UbiComp-supported fieldtrip to support creative writing, associated with the learning of literacy skills. We discuss how the fieldtrip, designed and run in the grounds of a historic English country house with Year 5 UK schoolchildren, engendered interactions which changed both the processes and products of creative writing, with benefits for both teachers and children.

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 this paper we describe an investigation into the requirements for and the use of in-situ authoring in the creation of location based pervasive and UbiComp experiences. We will focus on the co-design process with users that resulted in a novel visitor experience to a historic country estate. This has informed the design of new, in-situ, authoring tools supplemented with tools for retrospective revisiting and reorganization of content. An initial trial of these new tools will be discussed and conclusions drawn as to the appropriateness of such tools. Further enhancements as part of future trials will also be described.