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ICY Interfaces: Exploration of Ice’s Ephemeral Features for Digital Game User Experience
We propose a new class of haptic devices that provide haptic sensations by delivering liquid-stimulants to the user’s skin; we call this chemical haptics. Upon absorbing these stimulants, which contain safe and small doses of key active ingredients, receptors in the user’s skin are chemically triggered, rendering distinct haptic sensations. We identified five chemicals that can render lasting haptic sensations: tingling (sanshool), numbing (lidocaine), stinging (cinnamaldehyde), warming (capsaicin), and cooling (menthol). To enable the application of our novel approach in a variety of settings (such as VR), we engineered a self-contained wearable that can be worn anywhere on the user’s skin (e.g., face, arms, legs). Implemented as a soft silicone patch, our device uses micropumps to push the liquid stimulants through channels that are open to the user’s skin, enabling topical stimulants to be absorbed by the skin as they pass through. Our approach presents two unique benefits. First, it enables sensations, such as numbing, not possible with existing haptic devices. Second, our approach offers a new pathway, via the skin’s chemical receptors, for achieving multiple haptic sensations using a single actuator, which would otherwise require combining multiple actuators (e.g., Peltier, vibration motors, electro-tactile stimulation). We evaluated our approach by means of two studies. In our first study, we characterized the temporal profiles of sensations elicited by each chemical. Using these insights, we designed five interactive VR experiences utilizing chemical haptics, and in our second user study, participants rated these VR experiences with chemical haptics as more immersive than without. Finally, as the first work exploring the use of chemical haptics on the skin, we offer recommendations to designers for how they may employ our approach for their interactive experiences.
Recent advances in interactive technology are being used to enrich our interactions around food and drinks. Making use of sound to enrich dining - providing “gustosonic” experiences - has recently garnered interest as an exciting area of ubiquitous computing. However, these experiences have tended to focus on eating. In response to the lack of drinking-focused experiences, we explore the combining playful design and drinking activities so as to allow users to experience playful personalized sounds via drinking through "Sonic Straws". We present the findings of an in-the-wild study that highlights how our system supported self-expression via playful drinking actions, facilitated pleasurable social drinking moments, and promoted reflection on drinking practices. We discuss the implications of this work for designers of future gustosonic experiences, including how to amplify entertainment experiences around drinking/eating, how to highlight the joy coming from multisensory experiences, and how to facilitate mindful engagement with what one drinks. Ultimately, we aim to contribute to the enrichment of dining experiences through playful design.
Prior psychology studies have shown that eating ice cream increases happiness, while human-computer interaction work has shown that interactive technology can enrich the eating experience. We explore the opportunity to combine these two through WeScream!, a playful social gustosonic system we designed-social gustosonic referring to the link between the acts of eating and listening as part of a social multisensory experience. WeScream! consists of two interdependent ice cream cones that allow users to interact with musical sounds generated through the act of eating ice cream together. We report on an in-the-wild study that highlights how our system facilitated a "hard fun" experience through eating together, increased participants' awareness of relatedness, and drew shared attention to the ice cream's taste via increased face-to-face interaction. Drawing on these study insights, we also present three design tactics to guide designers in designing future social gustosonic experiences. Ultimately, we aim to contribute to a playful future of social eating experiences, supporting people in enjoying eating together.
We investigate an unconventional user interface (UI) material, water, and how applying it to a finger-touch based input affects the user experience (UX). We compare the use of touchscreen, mechanical and liquid covered sliders, and three different approaches of how water is applied to the surface of the slider. The salient findings of our user study (n=25) show that liquid changes the perception of the slider control making it more hedonic and experiental. When interacting with water, users prefer larger and more free-form gestures, and factors such as depth and temperature of the liquid affect the experience. Our work provides information for interaction designers focusing on user experience, unconventional materials for interactive systems, aesthetics, and calm UIs.
Living things in nature have long been utilizing the ability to "heal" their wounds on the soft bodies to survive in the outer environment. In order to impart this self-healing property to our daily life interface, we propose Self-healing UI, a soft-bodied interface that can intrinsically self-heal damages without external stimuli or glue. The key material to achieving Self-healing UI is MWCNTs-PBS, a composite material of a self-healing polymer polyborosiloxane (PBS) and a filler material multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), which retains mechanical and electrical self-healability. We developed a hybrid model that combines PBS, MWCNTs-PBS, and other common soft materials including fabric and silicone to build interface devices with self-healing, sensing, and actuation capability. These devices were implemented by layer-by-layer stacking fabrication without glue or any post-processing, by leveraging the materials' inherent self-healing property between two layers. We then demonstrated sensing primitives and interactive applications that extend the design space of shape-changing interfaces with their ability to transform, conform, reconfigure, heal, and fuse, which we believe can enrich the toolbox of human-computer interaction (HCI).
There is an increasing trend that explores the convergence of digital play and eating to support a playful relationship with food. We note that interactive sound, although prevalent in digital game design, has only received limited attention in this trend. To contribute to an understanding of "playful gus-tosonic experiences", we present a design and study of a novel capacitive-sensing ice cream cone, "iScream!". In a study with 32 participants, the cone played four different sounds (a roaring, crunchy, giggling, and burping sound in order to explore fantasy facilitation, food congruency, anthropomorphism and bodily response) when eating ice cream. The results are two themes derived from six findings each, which detail how players explored the different auditory interaction possibilities with their eating actions while the sounds in turn modified those eating actions. Based on these findings, we present four design tactics for designers aiming to create playful gustosonic experiences to ultimately facilitate a more playful relationship with food.
The experience of sound may be seen as fleeting or ephemeral, as it naturally disperses through space in waveforms unless recorded by media. We designed muRedder to reinstate the ephemerality of sound by shredding a song ticket that embeds a sound source while playing the song simultaneously. In this study, we explored ordinary music listening activities by turning intangible music content into tangible artefacts, making the music unable to be replayed, and representing the sound-fading process by shredding the ticket. We conducted a field study with 10 participants over seven days. The results showed that muRedder enabled users to focus solely on the music content and to actively find times to enjoy the music. We also found that limitedness of the media draws prudent decision in selecting music. By showing the process of consuming the invisible auditory content in a way that is tangibly perceivable, our findings imply new value for slow consumption of digital content and musical participation in public spaces.
Droplets or puddles tend to freeze from the propagation of a single freeze front. In contrast, videographers have shown that as soap bubbles freeze, a plethora of growing ice crystals can swirl around in a beautiful effect visually reminiscent of a snow globe. However, the underlying physics of how bubbles freeze has not been studied. Here, we characterize the physics of soap bubbles freezing on an icy substrate and reveal two distinct modes of freezing. The first mode, occurring for isothermally supercooled bubbles, generates a strong Marangoni flow that entrains ice crystals to produce the aforementioned snow globe effect. The second mode occurs when using a cold stage in a warm ambient, resulting in a bottom-up freeze front that eventually halts due to poor conduction along the bubble. Blending experiments, scaling analysis, and numerical methods, the dynamics of the freeze fronts and Marangoni flows are characterized.
Tangible user interfaces have a rich history in HCI research ever since their introduction two decades ago. But what are the practical implications, the commercial potential, and the future of this influential paradigm? This panel starts by looking into the importance of tangible interaction and its current role. It will then draw on the expertise of both the panelists and the audience to speculate about its future and new opportunities for the field. The panelists represent a variety of perspectives from both industry and academia, and includes some of the most well-known innovators in the field. The format builds on the CHI 2006 panel The state of tangible interfaces: projects, studies, and open issues, which shared some of the same organizers.
In this art project, the ephemeral and intangible aspects of human's communication are represented by soap-bubble. The shapeless, intangible, and insubstantial speech - once the speech is shouted out through speaker's mouth it disappears unless someone hears it immediately, or even it is heard, the message will be forgotten as time goes - is transferred to a semi-tangible yet still fleeting bubble. The bubble machine that we created provides person-to-person and person-to-space interaction. The machine has a iris mechanism that varies its outlet size reacting to the participant's speech pattern as if it tries to talk something. Once the participant pauses, the machine blows out various sizes of bubble. The floating bubble represents the subtle state of a message from interpersonal communications that lies in the middle of real and digital world. Also, it creates a certain delay until it pops, which is a metaphor of our behavior that we often delay to send out text-messages through chatting apps. We believe that anyone can be an artist. By open-sourcing the details of fabrication process and materials, we want to encourage people to build the machine, interact with it at any locations, and use and modify it as a art tool for realizing their own ideas whether it is for art or not.
Sound Shifting is an artistic research project that focuses on the physical representation of sound - this means the visualization and materialization of invisible phenomena that significantly shape our perception. We present a system that allows the transformation from sound into form in real-time by using a newly developed machine, the Audio Foam Cutter. This machine converts sound into polystyrene stripes that are arranged into sculptural objects. The resulting sound sculptures provide information about the represented sounds by their shape and aesthetic features and expand the range of our auditory perception to the tangible domain. The sound sculptures are snapshots of our soundscape and form a physical archive of sound representations. The Sound Shifting project aims to create an awareness of the materiality of sonic movements and affects.
Ice is a familiar material to all, with a wide set of applications across artistic, cultural, scientific and technical domains. Most recently, the natural beauty of ice combined with its ephemerality is symbolic of the fragility of the global environment and climate change. Ice has been utilized as a design material in many formats, yet research has not so far presented a systematic framework for its applications. This paper presents a design space for ice as a design material and introduces examples and domains where ice has been utilized, particularly as part of interactive systems. The framework describes design properties that include e.g. state change, granularity and structural properties of ice.
This article discusses winter art and its development in northern Finland. I will introduce the background of my own artistic work with the winter element and the Winter Art Education project run by the Department of Art Education at the University of Lapland. In the project successful, winter art opens up new perspectives on contemporary art as well on how winter is experienced and understood locally and how winter-related experiences and activities might be developed. This article also includes a critical perspective. Cooperation with the international Snow Show art event offered a challenging opportunity to work simultaneously in a local and an international environment. Furthermore, it was an excellent opportunity for analyzing and learning from the possibilities and problems of producing artistic experiences.
We present BreathScreen, a concept where clouds created by breathing are used as a projection surface for a picoprojector, creating an ephemeral user interface. In cold weather conditions the clouds are created naturally by warm breath condensing, but in other conditions an electric vaporizer may be used. We present an initial evaluation of the concept in a user study (n = 8), utilising a vaporizer-based BreathScreen prototype. The concept was positively received by study participants as a natural, hands-free interface and considered magical and aesthetically beautiful. Additionally, we provide guidance on the quantity of content that may be displayed on a BreathScreen, which is limited both by the length of a human breath and the contrast of the system.
Motivation is a key factor for introducing and maintaining healthy changes in behaviour. However, typical visualization methods (e.g., bar-, pie-, and line charts) hardly motivate individuals. We investigate how a plant---a living visualization---whose health relies on the plant owner's level of activity, can engage people in tracking and self-reflecting on their fitness data. To address this question, we designed, implemented, and studied Go & Grow, a living plant that receives water proportionally to its owner's activity. Our six-week qualitative study with ten participants suggests that living visualizations have qualities that their digital counterparts do not have. This includes people feeling: emotionally connected to their plant; sentiments such as pride and guilt; and responsibility towards their plant. Based on this study, we introduce the Goal Motivation Model, a model considering the diversity of individuals, thus supporting and encouraging a diversity of strategies for accomplishing goals.
Makeup has been a body decoration process for self expression and transforming one's appearance. While the material composition and processes for creating makeup products have evolved, they still remain static and noninteractive. However, as our social contexts demand different representations of ourselves, we propose ChromoSkin, a dynamic color-changing makeup system which gives the wearer ability to seamlessly alter their appearance. As an initial exploration, we prototyped an interactive eye shadow tattoo composed of thermochromic pigments which are activated by electronics or ambient temperature conditions. We present the design and fabrication of these interactive cosmetics, and the challenges in creating skin interfaces that are seamless, dynamic, and fashionable.
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers are increasingly captivated by water interactions and hence explored interactive devices to support aquatic activities in different settings (e.g., mixed realities in water parks). However, our understanding of the user experience in interacting with water and technology is still underdeveloped. To begin closing this gap, we explore flotation tanks as a water setting for playful interactive experiences. The goal of the associated somaesthetic design approach was to sensitize the body of the designer (the first author) by engaging with her experiences interacting with water and create meaningful interactions. This preliminary work presents four different user experiences that can facilitate play through a defamiliarization analysis of water interaction with the body mediated by technology. We offer HCI insights for design researchers interested in creating playful experiences in water settings, while also providing industry with initial strategies on how to enrich flotation tank sessions.
Self-powered devices and micro-sensors are in high demand for intelligent electronics and flexible wearables for applications in medical healthcare and human–computer interactive robotics. Flexible, stretchable, wearable and breathable high-sensitivity sensors that monitor signals from subtle changes in the environment provide solutions for personalized medical healthcare. In this article, we review the fundamental mechanisms, theoretical research, sensor fabrication methodologies, and applications of flexible piezoelectric materials. We focus on the flexibility and stretchability of inorganic, polymer, and bio-piezoelectric materials, explain their properties for physiological signal monitoring, motion detection, and force sensing. We provide an overview of the latest progress in piezoelectronics and piezoelectric photonics, the structures of devices, and self-powering technologies. We compared 10 types of polymers and composites with human skin in terms of elastic modulus and found that PLLA/PDMS, electro-spun PVDF, and ZnO/PVDF possess higher elastic modulus (50, 500, and 27900 MPa respectively) than human skin (18.8 MPa), thus being more suitable for wearable devices. In terms of electrical outputs of piezoelectric materials, polarized cast film has stronger piezoelectric property with output of 14–45.6 V than electro-spun filaments material (output 0.4–9 V). Future research and development should focus on increasing electrical performance while maintaining the required flexibility and durability.
Self-monitoring devices are becoming increasingly popular in the support of physical activity experiences. These devices mostly represent on-screen data using numbers and graphs and in doing so, they may miss multi-sensorial methods for engaging with data. Embracing the opportunity for pleasurable interactions with one's own data through the use of different materials and digital fabrication technology, we designed and studied three systems that turn this data into 3D-printed plastic artifacts, sports drinks, and 3D-printed chocolate treats. We utilize the insights gained from associated studies, related literature, and our experiences in designing these systems to develop a conceptual framework, “ Shelfie. ” The “ Shelfie ” framework has 13 cards that convey key themes for creating material representations of physical activity data. Through this framework, we present a conceptual understanding of relationships between material representation and physical activity data and contribute guidelines to the design of meaningful material representations of physical activity data.
Design: Critical and Primary Sources brings together 100 essential texts on design from the mid 19th century to the present day, covering key thinkers, movements and issues for design. The four volumes focus on:
1) Design Reform, Modernism and Modernization
2) Professional Practice and Design Theories
3) Social Interactions
4) Development, Globalization and Sustainability
Each volume features an editorial introduction and articles are grouped into thematic sections within the volume.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/materiality-interaction
The Materiality of Interaction
Notes on the Materials of Interaction Design
Abstract:
Summary
A new approach to interaction design that moves beyond representation and metaphor to focus on the material manifestations of interaction.
Smart watches, smart cars, the Internet of things, 3D printing: all signal a trend toward combining digital and analog materials in design. Interaction with these new hybrid forms is increasingly mediated through physical materials, and therefore interaction design is increasingly a material concern. In this book, Mikael Wiberg describes the shift in interaction design toward material interactions. He argues that the “material turn” in human-computer interaction has moved beyond a representation-driven paradigm, and he proposes “material-centered interaction design” as a new approach to interaction design and its materials. He calls for interaction design to abandon its narrow focus on what the computer can do and embrace a broader view of interaction design as a practice of imagining and designing interaction through material manifestations. A material-centered approach to interaction design enables a fundamental design method for working across digital, physical, and even immaterial materials in interaction design projects.
Wiberg looks at the history of material configurations in computing and traces the shift from metaphors in the design of graphical user interfaces to materiality in tangible user interfaces. He examines interaction through a material lens; suggests a new method and foundation for interaction design that accepts the digital as a design material and focuses on interaction itself as the form being designed; considers design across substrates; introduces the idea of “interactive compositions”; and argues that the focus on materiality transcends any distinction between the physical and digital.
Public displays have invaded urban spaces, and different types of interactive screens are commonplace. In this poster paper, we describe an unconventional solution to construct an interactive display in an urban environment, projecting on a wall of snow. We demonstrated an interactive installation, where passersby could interact with a playful mirror application using gestures. The demonstrated installation projected on a snow wall offers an inspiring and aesthetic alternative screen set-up, which can also be used as part of the environmental and architectural landscape design for winter contexts.
Playfulness is an individual difference variable that enables people to (re-)frame everyday situations in a way such that they experience them as entertaining, and/or intellectually stimulating, and/or personally interesting. It has been argued that humor is a specific variant of play (the behavior associated with playfulness)—the play with ideas. Recently a new structural model for playfulness has been proposed that differentiates among its other-directed, lighthearted, intellectual, and whimsical facets. We provide an overview on studies, testing the playfulness–creativity overlap in different contexts (e.g., sports, schools), samples (e.g., students, employees), and assessment methods of creativity (e.g., domain-specific, scenario-based, performance measures). Overall, the associations are typically somewhat lower than expected. We conclude that there is a conceptual overlap, but it is probably best seeing play and playfulness as a facilitator of creativity without them being redundant. We also discuss potential applications and directions to study the causal relationship.
"You Better Eat to Survive" is a two-player virtual reality game that involves eating real food to survive and ultimately escape from a virtual island. We sense eating actions of players by analyzing chewing sounds captured by a low-cost microphone attached to the players cheek. Our interest in using cooperative eating as a way of interacting in virtual reality is driven by the possibilities of creating a cross-modal gameplay experience that benefits social interactions. A user study with 22 players showed that eating real food improved players feeling of presence, challenged trust dependencies and made the survival aspect of the game feel more "real". We use these insights to articulate three design themes that can guide designers in creating virtual reality games that incorporate cooperative eating. Ultimately, our work aims to guide design thinking towards using underexplored interaction methods in virtual reality games, thereby reiterating the post-digital design theme of TEI 2018.
This book gives a mathematical treatment of a novel concept in material science that characterizes the properties of dynamic materials—that is, material substances whose properties are variable in space and time. Unlike conventional composites that are often found in nature, dynamic materials are mostly the products of modern technology developed to maintain the most effective control over dynamic processes. These materials have diverse applications: tunable left-handed dielectrics, optical pumping with high-energy pulse compression, and electromagnetic stealth technology, to name a few. Of special significance is the participation of dynamic materials in almost every optimal material design in dynamics.
The book discusses some general features of dynamic materials as thermodynamically open systems; it gives their adequate tensor description in the context of Maxwell’s theory of moving dielectrics and makes a special emphasis on the theoretical analysis of spatio-temporal material composites (such as laminates and checkerboard structures). Some unusual applications are listed along with the discussion of some typical optimization problems in space-time via dynamic materials.
Audience
This book is intended for applied mathematicians interested in optimal problems of material design for systems governed by hyperbolic differential equations. It will also be useful for researchers in the field of smart metamaterials and their applications to optimal material design in dynamics.
We present a novel design idea to capture and preserve the laughter of ourselves, friends, and loved ones with tangible representations. With preliminary design explorations, we discuss interaction design opportunities for celebrating our positive affect through concrete reminders of our laughter.
Self-monitoring offers benefits in facilitating awareness about physical exercise, but such data-centric activity may not always lead to an enjoyable experience. We introduce EdiPulse a novel system that creates activity treats to offer playful reflections on everyday physical activity through the appealing medium of chocolate. EdiPulse translates self-monitored data from physical activity into small 3D printed chocolate treats. These treats (
During the winter of early 2015, a replica of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia was built in
ice on a scale of 1:5 in Finland. The international project was jointly prepared and
executed by students and staff of TU Eindhoven (NL) and Ghent University (BE). The
structure was built in subsequent steps. First, large pneumatic membranes, provided
with a reinforcing rope net, were anchored to the ground and inflated. Subsequently, a
mix of water and small wood fibres was sprayed onto the inflatables at outdoor
temperatures of approximately -20° C, making it to freeze in multiple thin layers until
the required structural thickness was reached. Finally, once the ice shell had gained
sufficient strength and stability on its own, the supporting membrane was deflated and
removed. Although various technical and environmental problems posed severe
challenges to the project teams, the world record of highest ice structure was achieved
(22 m).
Data communication is critical in data science. We propose data edibilization, i.e., encoding data with edible materials, as a novel approach to leverage multiple sensory channels to convey data stories. We conduct a preliminary data tasting workshop to explore how users interact with and interpret data edibilization. Based on the participants' feedback, we summarize the advantages of edibilization in terms of attractiveness, richness, memorability, affectiveness, and sociability. We also identify several challenges with data edibilization. We discuss possible pragmatic processes, enabling technologies, and potential research opportunities to provide insights into the design space of data edibilization and its practicality.
In this paper we present the concept of Emergeables -- mobile surfaces that can deform or 'morph' to provide fully-actuated, tangible controls. Our goal in this work is to provide the flexibility of graphical touchscreens, coupled with the affordance and tactile benefits offered by physical widgets. In contrast to previous research in the area of deformable displays, our work focuses on continuous controls (e.g., dials or sliders), and strives for fully-dynamic positioning, providing versatile widgets that can change shape and location depending on the user's needs. We describe the design and implementation of two prototype emergeables built to demonstrate the concept, and present an in-depth evaluation that compares both with a touchscreen alternative. The results show the strong potential of emergeables for on-demand, eyes-free control of continuous parameters, particularly when comparing the accuracy and usability of a high-resolution emergeable to a standard GUI approach. We conclude with a discussion of the level of resolution that is necessary for future emergeables, and suggest how high-resolution versions might be achieved.
The material foundations of computer systems and interactive technology is a topic that gained an increased interest within the HCI community during the last years. In this paper we discuss this topic through the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi, a philosophy that embraces three basic realities of the material world: ‘nothing lasts’, ‘nothing is finished’, and ‘nothing is perfect’. We use these concepts to reflect on four unique interactive artefacts, which all in different ways embrace aspects of Wabi-Sabi, in terms of their design gestalt, materiality, but also in terms of use practices. Further, we use our analysis to articulate three high-level principles that may help addressing the long-term realities faced in physical interaction design, and for the design of interactive systems in general.
As an interesting topic in computer graphics, visual simulation of ice has been widely studied. However, there have been very few researches on flowing water freezing with phase transition. In this paper, a physical particle-based ice freezing model is presented. By solving heat conduction and air bubble diffusion based on fluid dynamics, our method allows the simulation of freezing phenomena that occur in flowing water. With the advanced heat transfer model, fluid freezing can be simulated in arbitrary cooling direction and speed. During the dynamic freezing process, distance smoothed diffusion of air bubbles are calculated to produce realistic freezing result. Dynamic volume expansion of ice is easily captured by changing particle density. Efficient and realistic solidification process is simulated with phase-based viscosity and rigid-shape matching constraints to particles. Realistic animation of ice freezing phenomenon is achieved naturally with our method.
This paper offers an approach that encourages children to play with food in a creative way. Children create video-games out of food while they cook or eat. We propose the use of Inventame, an App that allows the user to focus on the creative part. He crafts his own game in the real world with his preferred physical ingredients. Then, he takes a picture of his creation, configures a few options in the App, and the picture becomes playable. After this creative process, the user can play the digital version of his game once he has eaten the real one. This paper also describes four examples that illustrate the creation of playable food from several different ingredients and with different functions and playability.
In this paper, we present the first systematic user study exploring the user experience and perceptions towards different natural materials – water, ice, stone, sand, fire, wind and soup bubbles. By trying out different materials, participants (n = 16) expressed their associations and perceptions, rated different qualities of the materials, and described their impressions through product reaction cards. Our findings reveal for example that light weight and ease of movement are perceived as central qualities when inspiring and fun elements are sought for. This exploratory study shines light on user experiences with natural elements, and provides an experimental grounding for naturalistic tangible user interface design. Material qualities in tangible user interface design create a subtle, but critical part of the user experience.