Flying dreams have the potential to evoke a feeling of empowerment (or self-efficacy, confidence in our ability to succeed) and self-transcendent experience (STE), which have been shown to contribute to an individual’s overall well-being. However, these exceptional dreaming experiences remain difficult to induce at will. Inspired by the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) to support profound emotional experiences, we explored if a VR flying interface with more embodied self-motion cues could contribute to the benefits associated with flying dreams (i.e., STE and empowerment). Our results indicated that a flying interface with more self-motion cues indeed better supported STE and empowerment. We derived several design considerations: obscurity, extraordinary light and supportive setting. Our results contribute to the discourse around design guidelines for self-transcendence and empowerment in VR, which may further be applied to the improvement of mental well-being.

Human-Computer Integration (HInt) is an emerging paradigm in which computational and human systems are closely interwoven. Integrating computers with the human body is not new. however, we believe that with rapid technological advancements, increasing real-world deployments, and growing ethical and societal implications, it is critical to identify an agenda for future research. We present a set of challenges for HInt research, formulated over the course of a five-day workshop consisting of 29 experts who have designed, deployed and studied HInt systems. This agenda aims to guide researchers in a structured way towards a more coordinated and conscientious future of human-computer integration.

Third wave HCI initiated a slow transformation in the methods of UX research: from widely used quantitative approaches to more recently employed qualitative techniques. Articulating the nuances, complexity, and diversity of a user's experience beyond surface descriptions remains a challenge within design. One qualitative method — micro-phenomenology — has been used in HCI/Design research since 2001. Yet, no systematic understanding of micro-phenomenology has been presented, particularly from the perspective of HCI/Design researchers who actively use it in design contexts. We interviewed 5 HCI/Design experts who utilize micro-phenomenology and present their experiences with the method. We illustrate how this method has been applied by the selected experts through developing a practice, and present conditions under which the descriptions of the experience unfold, and the values that this method can provide to HCI/Design field. Our contribution highlights the value of micro-phenomenology in articulating the experience of designers and participants, developing vocabulary for multi-sensory experiences, and unfolding embodied tacit knowledge.

Attending to breath is a self-awareness practice that exists within many contemplative and reflective traditions and is recognized for its benefits to well-being. Our current technological landscape embraces a large body of systems that utilize breath data in order to foster self-awareness. This paper seeks to deepen our understanding of the design space of systems that perceptually extend breath awareness. Our contribution is twofold: (1) our analysis reveals how the underlying theoretical frameworks shape the system design and its evaluation, and (2) how system design features support perceptual extension of breath awareness. We review and critically analyze 31 breath-based interactive systems. We identify 4 theoretical frameworks and 3 design strategies for interactive systems that perceptually extend breath awareness. We reflect upon this design space from both a theoretical and system design perspective, and propose future design directions for developing systems that "listen to" breath and perceptually extend it.

Many studies have proposed different ways of supporting flying in embodied virtual reality (VR) interfaces with limited success. Our research explores the usage of a user's lower body to support flying locomotion control through a novel "flexible perching" (FlexPerch) stance that provides user with leg moving ability while sitting. We conducted an observational study exploring participants' preferred usage of the FlexPerch stance, and a mixed-method study comparing the same flying experience with existing sitting and standing stances. Our results show that FlexPerch markedly increased participants' feelings of flying. However, people may not like "flying" when they really can - the freedom, feeling of floating, and novelty contributing to this sensation can also mean more effort and feeling unsafe or unfamiliar. We suggest that researchers studying VR flying interfaces evaluate the feeling of flying, and raise design considerations to use stances like FlexPerch to elicit feelings of flying and stimulation.

Busy daily lives and ongoing distractions often make people feel disconnected from their bodies and experiences. Guided attention to self can alleviate this disconnect as in focused-attention meditation, in which breathing often constitutes the primary object on which to focus attention. In this context, sustained breath awareness plays a crucial role in the emergence of the meditation experience. We designed an immersive virtual environment (iVE) with a generative soundtrack that supports sustained attention on breathing by employing the users' breathing in interaction. Both sounds and visuals are directly mapped to the user's breathing patterns, thus bringing the awareness researched. We conducted micro-phenomenology interviews to unfold the process in which breath awareness can be induced and sustained in this environment. The findings revealed the mechanisms by which audio and visual cues in VR can elicit and foster breath-awareness, and unfolded the nuances of this process through subjective experiences of the study participants. Finally, the results emphasize the important role that a sense of agency and control have in shaping the overall quality of the experience. This can in turn inform the design specifications of future mindfulness-based designs focused on breath awareness.

Virtual reality (VR) is resurging in popularity with the advancement of low-cost hardware and more realistic graphics. How might this technology help others? That is, to increase mental well-being? The ultimate VR might look like lucid dreaming, the phenomenon of knowing one is dreaming while in the dream. Lucid dreaming can be used as an introspective tool and, ultimately, increase mental well-being. What these introspective experiences are like for lucid dreamers might be key in determining specific design guidelines for future creation of a technological tool used for helping people examine their own thoughts and emotions. This study describes nine active and proficient lucid dreamers' representations of their introspective experiences gained through phenomenological interviews. Four major themes emerged: sensations and feelings, actions and practices, influences on experience, and meaning making. This knowledge can help design a VR system that is grounded in genuine experience and preserving the human condition.

Human movement has historically been approached as a functional component of interaction within human computer interaction. Yet movement is not only functional, it is also highly expressive. In our research, we explore how movement expertise as articulated in Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) can contribute to the design of computational models of movement's expressive qualities as defined in the framework of Laban Efforts. We include experts in LMA in our design process, in order to select a set of suitable multimodal sensors as well as to compute features that closely correlate to the definitions of Efforts in LMA. Evaluation of our model shows that multimodal data combining positional, dynamic and physiological information allows for a better characterization of Laban Efforts. We conclude with implications for design that illustrate how our methodology and our approach to multimodal capture and recognition of Effort qualities can be integrated to design interactive applications.

We consider kinesthetic awareness, the perception of our own body position and movement in space, as a critical value for embodied design within third wave HCI. We designed an interactive sound installation that supports kinesthetic awareness of a participant's micro-movements. The installation's interaction design uses continuous auditory feedback and leverages an adaptive mapping strategy, refining its sensitivity to increase sonic resolution at lower levels of movement activity. The installation uses field recordings as rich source materials to generate a sound environment that attunes to a participant's micro-movements. Through a qualitative study using a second-person interview technique, we gained nuanced insights into the participants' subjective experiences of the installation. These reveal consistent temporal patterns, as participants build on a gradual process of integration to increase the complexity and capacity of their kinesthetic awareness during interaction.

The value of integrating the body and experience into technology has become an important goal in third wave HCI. One challenge in using experiential design methodologies is understanding how to transmit and apply the fullness of an experience into a computational system. We explore the relationship and meaning that can be created between kinesthetic experiences, words, and sensor data through the design of an interactive system that generates poetry from movement data. POEME (Portrayal of Ephemeral Movement Experiences) combines words into insightful, whimsical, and witty poetry that interprets one's movement. We refined our design of POEME through kinesthetically evaluating sensor data with the aid of visual analytic tools and confirmed the utility of these results through incorporating them into an effective machine learning system. Through this combination of visual analytics and kinesthetic evaluation, we contribute to the exploration of innovative design practices that both embody and evaluate movement interaction design strategies.

The interactive movement installation, POEME: A Poetry Engine explores the relationship between bodily, mechanical and digital interpretations of movement. The installation grew out of our design of POEME, a mobile website that responds to movement with poetic verse. While the POEME website can be used virtually anywhere, the installation anchors the interaction to a tangible space. We reference the choreographed routines of mass transit by giving participants a virtual ticket which grants them entrance to a private performance space. The participant's movement is conveyed outside of the space in the form of measurements and poetic verse created from words that relate to mechanical theories of movement. In order to understand the relationship between these interpretations and the bodily movement that powers POEME, the audience must experience the interaction for themselves. POEME builds off prior work in body-centric, experiential design. In contrast to systems that seek to identify individual features of movement, we instead attempt to characterize and respond to whole kinesthetic experiences through poetic verse.

In this paper, we investigate the value and challenges of observing movement experience in embodied design. We interviewed three design researchers selected from a CHI2014 panel on designing for the experiential body. For each designer, we analyzed a publication describing their process of observing movement experience. By analyzing the interviews and publications, we studied how these researchers observe movement and how they articulate it in their design process. From our study, we contribute a set of techniques for performing movement observation inspired by somatics and body-based practices which we define as: attunement, attention, and kinesthetic empathy. We illustrate how these techniques have been applied by the selected researchers, and also highlight the remaining challenges related to articulating, translating, and sharing the felt movement experience in the context of design within HCI. Finally, we address these challenges by arguing for further exploration of movement frameworks from the fields of somatics, body-based practices, and movement studies as specific strategies that can be applied to HCI.

While mobile authoring applications are proliferating, choreographic tools that support the generation and transformation of user-created movement `samples' are less readily available. iDanceForms is a novel mobile choreographic application that generates unique movement choices through a camera stillframing technique to provoke movement catalysts. In keeping with the principles of whole body interaction (and principles of `defamiliarization'), the design of iDanceForms supports opportunities for surprise, unexpected movement choices and meaning-making. This paper presents data collected from an observational study of choreographers using iDanceForms. In the study we found that choreographers appropriated the intended functionality of iDanceForms to create highly individualized and unexpected movement sequences. They found inspiration in exploring unexpected framing of form and content, which resulted in creative explorations that produced unique movement possibilities provided by the system. Drawing from our observations we discuss possible roles that sensor-enabled mobile devices could play in movement generation through personal meaning-making, creative choreographic strategies and discovery, and in provoking whole body interaction through principles of `defamiliarization' in the context of HCI.

We describe design considerations in Serpentine Dance, Refocused (SDR), an interactive movement installation that pays homage to Loïe Fuller's mesmerizing creations of light and motion. Our design goals were inspired by kinesthetic empathy research. Fuller created the Serpentine Dance (1891) at a time when many artists turned to abstraction as a way for audiences to engage with the essence of motion rather than narrative plots. We sought to heighten the feeling of kinesthetic empathy through creating an interactive environment where audience members could physically engage and reflect on the sensation of spinning, a prominent action in the Serpentine Dance. Through our analysis of SDR we found that our design intentions relating to kinesthetic empathy were not addressed by current design frameworks for kinesthetic interactions. Based on kinesthetic empathy research, we restructure and extend these frameworks into an evaluative and generative framework for interactive systems. We propose that kinesthetic empathy is the center of all movement interactions. This broader definition of kinesthetic empathy can be used to evaluate and generate a wide variety of movement interactions. We discuss the design of SDR through the lens of our evaluative framework.

We investigate the use of interactive sound feedback for dance pedagogy based on the practice of vocalizing while moving. Our goal is to allow dancers to access a greater range of expressive movement qualities through vocalization. We propose a methodology for the sonification of Effort Factors, as defined in Laban Movement Analysis, based on vocalizations performed by movement experts. Based on the experiential outcomes of an exploratory workshop, we propose a set of design guidelines that can be applied to interactive sonification systems for learning to perform Laban Effort Factors in a dance pedagogy context.

While single-accelerometers are a common consumer embedded sensors, their use in representing movement data as an intelligent resource remains scarce. Accelerometers have been used in movement recognition systems, but rarely to assess expressive qualities of movement. We present a prototype of wearable system for the real-time detection and classification of movement quality using acceleration data. The system applies Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) to recognize Laban Effort qualities from acceleration input using a Machine Learning software that generates classifications in real time. Existing LMA-recognition systems rely on motion capture data and video data, and can only be deployed in controlled settings. Our single-accelerometer system is portable and can be used under a wide range of environmental conditions. We evaluate the performance of the system, present two applications using the system in the digital arts and discuss future directions.

This paper explores the connection between how users interact with a computational system for purposes of designing collaborative creativity support tools. We focus on the term defamiliarization as a disorientation technique used to actively engage users, provoking innovative interaction experiences. We have looked to literature in interaction design, creativity and education to explore terminology around defamiliarization in creative decision-making processes. We identified components of user agency, system guidance and novelty as important elements to use in designing for enticing interaction and provocative results in collaborative creativity support tools.

Interactive computer systems have been explored in the performing arts for the past two decades, incorporating several models of the Performer-Technology relationship. As computer systems are afforded greater autonomy and agency in performance and everyday interactions, an interface that reflects the collaborative nature of the Performer-Performer relationship is required. One potential solution utilizes the embodied knowledge of the performer's interaction by modeling breathing patterns in a computer agent as cues to the system's intended action. This choice is supported by theories from cognitive science, performing arts and philosophy illustrating that our embodied perception of other's intention provides the basis for human interaction. We engage the performer's awareness of the computer's 'intention' by modeling breathing patterns as embodied cues, engaging the performer's sense of intuition and empathy. We present our evaluation of a Performer-System interaction model with data collected from performers improvising in studio sessions with a system designed to project its intention through a simulated breath.

We illustrate how technology has influenced creative, embodied practices in urban dance styles by analyzing how technological metaphors underlie conceptual representations of the body, space, and movement in three related styles of urban dance: liquid, digitz , and finger tutting . The creative and technical embodied practices of urban dancers are not well understood in either the ethnographic or creative movement scholarly literature. Following an exploratory netnography of movement practitioners, we claim that unlike most dancers of traditional genres or other urban dance styles, dancers of these three styles frequently employ representations of the body and of space that are geometrical, mathematical, mechanical, or digital. To explain how viewers perceive and understand these metaphors, we extend the perceptual theory of structure from motion in order to apply dance performance reception theory to a model we call 'Structural Illusion from Embodied Motion' (SIEM). Our analysis of performance techniques of these styles suggests that during performance, dancers leverage SIEM to represent two types of 'illusions' to viewers: a) the dancer's body has a reconfigurable structure; and b) the dancer is immersed in a virtual environment that contains invisible, mutable objects and structures that are revealed only through the dancer's movement. The three dance styles exemplify a trend in popular dance in which body, space, and time are understood in the language of technology.

This Creativity & Cognition 2013 workshop explores emerging methods for mapping movement, technology and computation. We invite participants that are interested in bodily experience within computational knowledge representation. The title Beautiful Dance Moves, references the challenge of representing embodied movement knowledge within computational models. While human movement itself focuses on bodily experience, developing computational models for movement requires abstraction and representation of lived embodied cognition. Mappings between movement and its rich personal and cultural meanings provide an underexplored research domain that can provide insight within computational modeling. Many fields, including Interaction Design, have been inspired by recent developments within Neuroscience validating the primacy of movement in cognitive development and human intelligence. This has spawned a growing interest in experiential principles of movement awareness and mindfulness, while simultaneously fueling the need for developing computational models that can describe movement intelligence with greater rigour. This workshop seeks to explore an equal and richly nuanced epistemological partnership between movement experience and movement cognitive and computational representation.

This paper describes the design process of Wo.Defy, an interactive wearable kinetic garment inspired by the Self-Combing Sisters, a group of suffragette North Cantonese Chinese women of the late 19th and early 20th century, who challenged the traditional marital status of women through their choice of hair-styling and dress. The design and construction of the Wo.Defy interactive garment incorporates cultural and material references used by the Self-Combing Sisters. The garment responds to the wearer's physiological breathing patterns through physical kinetic movements in the form of motorized contracting floral doilies. Silk fibers and human hair are integrated into the garment as organic materials referencing personal and social memory. Wo.Defy contributes to the design discourse of Tangible Embodied Interaction by integrating cultural historical research into contemporary wearable design practice.

This research investigates audience experience of empathy with a performer during a digitally mediated performance. Theatrical performance necessitates social interaction between performers and audience. We present a performance-based study that explores audience awareness of performer's kinaesthetic activity in 2 ways: by isolating the audience's senses (visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic) and by focusing audience perception through defamiliarization. By positioning the performer behind the audience: in their 'backspace', we focus the audience's attention to the performer in an unfamiliar way. We describe two research contributions to the study of audience empathic experience during performance. The first is the development of a phenomenological interview method designed for extracting empirical evaluations of experience of audience members in a performance scenario. The second is a descriptive model for a poetics of reception. Our model is based on an empathetic audience-performer relationship that includes 3 components of audience awareness: contextual, interpersonal, and sense-based. Our research contributions are of particular benefit to performances involving digital media, and can provide insight into audience experience of empathy.

This paper summarizes the artistic concepts underlying the design of tendrils, a responsive kinetic wearable art-work in the form of an interactive garment. The design process of tendrils is based in artistic exploration influenced by the somatic turn: an approach to designing for experience using embodied practice. Based on a somaesthetic framework for the design of expressive interaction [1], tendrils emphasizes four main concepts, 1) the experience of the sensory self, 2) design for poetics of interaction, 3) materiality based in soft-circuit design as well as the sensory materiality of the body, and 4) the computational semantics that supports sensory input and response through touch, both locally on the garment and collectively through iphone/ipod touch interaction. The tendrils artwork is described in terms of its concept, aesthetics and execution.

This paper describes the artistic design concepts for the interactive wearable artworks tendrils and exhale exhibited at ACM Multimedia 2010 Interactive Art Program in Firenze Italy at the at the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi from 25 October through 6 November, 2010. These wearable art works are based in artistic exploration influenced by the somatic turn: an approach to designing for experience using body based practices that highlight the concept of somaesthetics as an approach to the design of expressive interaction. The interactive wearable art installations tendrils and exhale emphasize the experience of self-observation, poetics, materiality, and computational semantics that support sensory input such as touch and breath. In the context of interaction, somaesthetics offers a bridging strategy between embodied practices based in somatics, and the design for an aesthetics of interaction in wearable technology. These artworks illustrate the value of exploring artistic design strategies that employ a somaesthetic approach, and exemplify this approach in the design of a networked, wearable interactive art.

This paper describes BodyDaemon a techno-conceptual art project that includes a server that is powered and configured by a participant's physiological states and a protocol for exchanging bio/server data across the Internet.

Our physical technology continues to grow smaller and smaller; so small that the computer itself is no longer seen as an object but a set of invisible distributed processes. Technology is becoming an inseparable aspect of experience, palpable yet invisible. At the same time, an extra-ordinary wealth of literature is emerging within human-computer interaction that is exploring experience, embodiment, subjectivity, and felt-life. This interest is often accompanied by research questions that are continuing to re-balance our understanding of the relationship between subjective and objective knowing, making, and doing. These emerging trends can be seen as a response to the phenomena of the really, really small: and marks a cognitive and creative shift from the visible to the invisible. This paper contextualizes the emerging recognition within HCI that there is value in designing for technology as experience, and offers a framework from the field of Somatics that can contribute to the discourse, particularly with regard to the body in everyday life. Somatics is exemplified through first-person methodologies and embodied approaches to learning and interacting. I present a set of design cases that demonstrate its application within HCI.

The move.me prototype illustrates a scenario for social interaction in which users can manipulate audio-visual sources presented on various screens through an interaction with a sensor-enhanced pillow. The technology developed for move.me uses the surface of a pillow as a tactile interface. We describe the underlying concepts of move.me and its motivations. We present a case study of the environment as the context of evaluating aspects of our approach and conclude with plans for future work.

This paper describes the move.me interaction prototype developed in conjunction with V2_lab in Rotterdam. move.me proposes a scenario for social interaction and the notion of social intimacy. Interaction with sensory--enhanced, soft, pliable, tactile, throw-able cushions afford new approaches to pleasure, movement and play. A somatics approach to touch and kinaesthesia provides an underlying design framework. The technology developed for move.me uses the surface of the cushion as an intelligent tactile interface. Making use of a movement analysis system called Laban Effort-Shape, we have developed a model that provides a high-level interpretation of varying qualities of touch and motion trajectory. We describe the notion of social intimacy, and how we model it through techniques in somatics and performance practice. We describe the underlying concepts of move.me and its motivations. We illustrate the structural layers of interaction and related technical detail. Finally, we discuss the related body of work in the context of evaluating our approach and conclude with plans for future work.

No abstract available.

This paper explores the nature of creative composition particularly as it applies to dance, and describes the development of interactive computer based tools to assist the composer. The hierarchical nature of the composition process calls for an interface which allows the composer the flexibility to move back and forth between alternate views and conceptual levels of abstraction.COMPOSE, an interactive system for the composition of dance has been implemented on Silicon Graphics and Apple workstations. The user visually composes in space and in time using menus of postures and sequences. Paths can be edited and an animation of the dance composition allows the final result to be evaluated.