Search

Walking meetings are a promising way to reduce unhealthy sedentary behavior at the office. Some aspects of walking meetings are however hard to assess using traditional research approaches that do not account well for the embodied experience of walking meetings. We conducted a series of 16 bodystorming sessions, featuring unusual walking meeting situations to engage participants (N=45) in a reflective experience. After each bodystorming, participants completed three tasks: a body map, an empathy map, and a rating of workload using the NASA-TLX scale. These embodied explorations provide insights on key themes related to walking meetings: material and tools, physical and mental demand, connection with the environment, social dynamics, and privacy. We discuss the role of technology and opportunities for technology-mediated walking meetings. We draw implications for the design of walking meeting technologies or services to account for embodied experiences, and the individual, social, and environmental factors at play.

We acknowledge funding by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (PID2019-105579RBI00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the European Research Council Grant (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101002711). JL is funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitivity of Spain (doctoral training Grant BES-2017-080471). OV is funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (doctoral training Grant PRE2020-091790). EMS is funded by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of "Research Funds for Beatriz Galindo Fellowships" (MovIntPlayLab-CM-UC3M), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation).

Participation rates in physical activity are low, and with gyms closing and lockdowns becoming a necessary tool to fight the global pandemic, evidence suggests COVID-19 is only exacerbating the issue. People are becoming more sedentary as they stay at home longer and do more home office work. Exergames-games that require physical exertion to play-hold promise to combat sedentary behaviours, since they are typically inexpensive and can be played at home. Despite their potential to motivate people to move, it is challenging to design exergames because they must strike a balance between exercise and play. Current research in exergames provides some advice and guidelines on best practices for developing movement-based games. But, to date little attention has been given to the design processes that lead to the development of these guidelines. This paper aims to fill this gap by contributing 1) an in-depth discussion of and insights gained from the design process used when developing an exergame and 2) a novel movement-based method used in the development of a virtual reality (VR) exergame-VR bodystorming. We illustrate these methods through the development of Diverging Squash (DS), a novel VR squash game. We reveal insights throughout the entire design process from the beginning stages using brainstorming to focus on players' needs and motivation for physical activity, to using exertion cards for framing the game's primary elements. Exertion cards, for example, aided in our decision to gradually increase the difficulty of the game during play. We further demonstrate how our novel VR bodystorming method, or bodystorming in a virtual environment while wearing a VR headset, can be a useful tool for designers. For instance, during a VR bodystorming session, we practiced holding a virtual paddle in the VR environment in different ways. Insights from the way it was being held in VR led to adjustments to the way the paddle should be gripped, and the force needed to hit the ball. We conclude with key takeaways that give designers a view into how design methods for exergames are applied in practice and, thus, how they can be used in their own work.

Modern office environments foster sitting, a major public health risk, with physical inactivity being the fourth cause of death worldwide. This provocative pictorial presents the design explorations and bodily experimentations culminating in The Office Jungle, a critical and speculative redesign of the office environment that encourages physical activity by embracing wildness. The Office Jungle is a design exemplar of a "wild"office space presented as a suspended geodesic structure. It is built to experienc e how our office environment and our behaviour at work affect each other. We advocate that bringing wildness into office spaces will create more durable office environments that foster movement. With this pictorial, we aim to spark discussion amongst designers to think in new ways and to consider new opportunities to design for workplaces that integrate physical activity with work. © 2021 Owner/Author.

Early user involvement in the design of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) is fundamental for usability and otherwise good user experience. In this paper, we present a combination of methods used in the remote conceptual design of a virtual receptionist for a university department. The study builds on two workshops with potential users. The first was a bodystorming workshop in virtual reality (VR) with four researchers at the department, and the second was a desktop walkthrough workshop on an online whiteboard with five students at the department. Proposed solutions from the workshops were deconstructed using a morphological chart into a pentad of parameters: agent, act, scene, agency, and purpose. New design concepts were then composed by combining solutions. Sketching was used to further detail and present the generated concepts. Our analysis of the workshops indicates that the bodystorming workshop had an aesthetic perspective on embodied interaction while the desktop walkthrough workshop had a more instrumental perspective on usability. The combination of embodied but remote ideation methods with morphological chart structured by the pentad is novel to not only the IVA field, but also to interaction design in general. Finally, the conceptual design of a novel cross-platform IVA is proposed.

This pictorial describes in detail the design, and multiple iterations, of PizzaBlock - a role-playing game and design workshop to introduce non-technical participants to decentralised identity management systems. We have so far played this game with six different audiences, with over one hundred participants - iterating the design of the artefacts and gameplay each time. In this pictorial, we reflect on this RtD project to unpack: a) How we designed artefacts and roleplay to explore decentralised technologies and networks; b) How we communicated the key challenges and parameters of a complex system, through the production of a playable, interactive, analogue representation of that technology; c) How we struck a balance between playful tangible gameplay and high-fidelity technical analogy; and d) How approaches like PizzaBlock invite engagement with complex infrastructures and can support more participatory approaches to their design.

Situated sketching and enactment aim at grounding designs in the spatial, social and cultural practices of a particular place. This is particularly relevant when designing for public places in which human activities are open-ended, multi-faceted, and difficult to anticipate, such as libraries, train stations, or commercial areas. In order to investigate situated sketching and enactment, we developed Ébauche. It enables designers to collaboratively sketch interfaces, distribute them across multiple displays and enact use cases. We present the lessons learned from six situated sketching and enactment workshops on public displays with Ébauche. And we present the results of a controlled study with 8 pairs of designers who used paper and Ébauche. We present the various ways in which participants leveraged the place, and how paper or Ébauche influenced the integration of their designs in the place. Looking at the design outcomes, our results suggest that paper leads to broader exploration of ideas and deeper physical integration in the environment. Whereas Ébauche leads to more refined sketches and more animated enactments.

After a decade of movement-based interaction in human–computer interaction, designing for the moving body still remains a challenge. Research in this field requires methods to help access, articulate, and harness embodied experiences in ways that can inform the design process. To address this challenge, this article appropriates bodystorming, an embodied ideation method for movement-based interaction design. The proposed method allows for early consideration of the physical, collocated, and social aspects of a designed activity as illustrated with two explorative workshops in different application domains: interactive body games and interactive performances. Using a qualitative methods approach, we used video material from the workshops, feedback from participants, and our own experience as participants and facilitators to outline important characteristics of the bodystorming method in the domain of movement-based interaction. The proposed method is compared with previous ones and application implications are discussed.

This paper grounds in a research experience for engaging older people as co-designers of several wearable and in-house technologies. We start by describing a case study that is a precommercial procurement aimed at developing innovative services for the welfare of citizens, with a focus on older people. We present and discuss the qualitative data gathered on the occasion of a bodystorming with two groups of participants. The analysis led to the identification of the "aesthetic appropriateness", the "social sensitivity", and the "gender awareness" as three different dimensions that affected the acceptability of the technological devices. This approach created the conditions for instantiating the subversive power of participation. At the same time, such a subversion proved the authenticity of the participatory process. By drawing on this project, the purpose of the paper is to further our understanding of the conditions for Participatory Design.

Three-dimensional literature is a virtually non-existent or in any case very rare and emergent digital art form, defined by the author as a unit of text, which is not confined to the two-dimensional layout of print literature, but instead mediated across all three axes of a virtual space. In collaboration with two artists the author explores through a bodystorming workshop how writers and readers could create and experience three-dimensional literature in mixed reality, by using mobile devices that are equipped with motion sensors, which enable users to perform embodied interactions as an integral part of the literary experience.For documenting the workshop, the author used body-mounted action cameras in order to record the point-of-view of the participants. This choice turned out to generate promising knowledge on using point-of-view footage as an integral part of the methodological approach. The author has found that by engaging creatively with such footage, the designer gains a profound understanding and vivid memory of complex design activities.As the outcome the various design activities, the author developed a concept for an app called TEXTILE. It enables users to build three-dimensional texts by positioning words in a virtual bubble of space around the user and to share them, either on an online platform or at site-specific places. A key finding of this thesis is that the creation of three-dimensional literature on a platform such as TEXTILE is not just an act of writing – it is an act of sculpture and an act of social performance.

Comunicació i póster presentats a la International Conference on Interaction Design and Children celebrada a Manchester (Regne Unit) del 21 al 24 de juny de 2016. Research based on the embodied cognition framework proposes the use of physicality and spatiality to promote learning. Nevertheless, methods to include children in the design of Full-Body Interaction Learning Environments often neglect to properly integrate the notion of body and space. In this paper, we describe a participatory design process in which we focused on how children can be encouraged to pay attention to their own body, to proxemics and to embodied constraints of the environment. We explored how this awareness may inform children's design choices for a Full-Body Interaction Learning Environment for public spaces. Our findings indicate that our approach promoted children's awareness towards bodily and spatial aspects of their proposals. Our work contributes to the reflection upon the use of bodystorming and theater-based techniques in two contexts: (1) in a simulated environment of the experience and (2) in physical spaces in situ. Supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Grant TIN2014-60599-P).

International audience; This paper introduces a methodology for designing service concepts in the specific paradigm of the Internet of Things (IoT). In the frame of the European project ELLIOT - Experiential Living Lab for Internet Of Things -, the Living Lab ICT Usage Lab aims at co-creating "green" services, i.e. services based on air quality and noise measurement. These services are invented in an open innovation setting, by a set of stakeholders and not a given service provider. In this context, the ideation methodology has two main requirements: to design services deeply rooted in people routines but impacting people lifestyle and to design services potentially embedded in the Internet of Things. The novelty of the methodology lies in the coupling of two ad-hoc methods: 1) GenIoT, a method articulated around a generative technique where "designers" are asked to place probes (fake sensors and/or actuators) in their daily environment, i.e. the target service area, and to report on it to the group, and 2) AloHa!, a bodystorming method enabling "designers" to play not only characters but also intelligent objects in order to co-create service scenarios. After a description of these complementary methods, we provide the first results on the application of this methodology.

Comunicació i póster presentats a la International Conference on Interaction Design and Children celebrada a Boston (Estats Units) del 21 al 24 de juny de 2015. The aim of this paper is to explore techniques to design specific gestures with children to improve the interaction design of a Full- Body Interaction Learning Environment. This exploratory case study is part of the EcoSystem Project, a learning environment aimed at supporting children’s understanding of environmental issues related to air-pollution. In order to involve children in the design of the physical interaction with the system, we used two different techniques to facilitate the design of gestures: “sketching through the body” and “sketching with puppets”. The results indicate that children adopted different strategies to design gestures for each technique. Within them, the most effective approach was related to the switch between performing gestures with their own bodies and simulating those gestures with puppets. This finding indicates the potential of those Participatory Design methods which combine multi-modal resources as instruments to allow children to reflect upon their own knowledge and express it more precisely. Supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Grant TIN2014-60599-P).