Interaction design as understanding and transforming placeMette Agger Eriksen, Per Linde, Janna Lindsjö and Simon Niedenthal

School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University, Sweden

{mette.agger, per.linde, janna.lindsjo, simon.niedenthal@k3.mah.se}

AbstractSpace becomes place through a rich interplay ofactors, actions and associations, and techniquesdrawn from performance, gaming and architectureare well adapted to helping us understand and designfor complex environments. Our experience workingwith masters-level interaction design students in theATELIER project has demonstrated that these “crossdressing” techniques can create a climate ofawareness in which inspirational learning andinnovative design can occur.

Embodiment and interactionMechatronics, sensors and tags inhabit newenvironments built upon networks of semi-autonomous objects, in which information can bespatially configured. Ubiquitous computing isperhaps the most common names for this state ofaffairs. It is a great challenge, however, to integratenew technologies into complex, convergent systems.It is clear that new interfaces call for anunderstanding beyond the purely technical.Augmenting spaces and artifacts is also a process ofsupporting shared understanding of the socialactivities taking place in different contexts. Theseenvironments are not limited to workspaces, but alsoinclude public and domestic spaces. The CentralStation in Malmö is one example of a place that hasemergent qualities, that is more than the sum of itsdifferent communities. A challenge for ubiquitouscomputing is to integrate computation with existingartifacts, physical space and the social meaning-making taking place within the environment.

While abstraction is one of the strengths ofcomputation and digital media, it is obvious thatusers are more than just information processingsystems. The relationship between information andknowledge is one example of how meaning is notinherent in information, but rather made meaningfulby direct participation in the world. Dourishintroduces the notion of embodied interaction: “thecreation, manipulation, and sharing of meaningthrough engaged interaction with artefacts”i A shifttowards embodied interaction is called for by therecognition that incorporating human skills requiresmoving computation “out of the box” and “into ourenvironments”. Digital artefacts are not primarilyrepresentations, but participate actively in the world.

The HCI tradition has developed various methodsfor evaluating qualities of use. Centered uponefficiency, ease of use and learning, these methodsfail to adequately incorporate aesthetic experienceand socially meaningful activity into the designprocess. In many cases qualities of use are differentfrom those imagined by the designer. Hallnäs andRedström define this shift of perspective as being onefrom use to presence. Presence is something differentfrom just being physically present. It addresses theway we let artifacts inhabit our life-worlds on a moreexistential level. Clearly there is a distinctionbetween describing a table as something “inheritedby my grandfather” and ”a piece of furniture that canbear X kg”ii. The difference is essential, but alsodifficult to evaluate in scientific terms. That difficultyis one of the reasons that methods directed at theimagination are often seen as belonging to informalstructures, and not usable within formal systemsdesign processes.

Knowing the user and context of use is a widelyaccepted principle in the field interaction design. It’sa question of negotiating meaning, as well asgrasping the network of actors, objects and tools thatexist within an environment. This work produces ahuge amount of material in different formats, bothdigital and physical. Designers must forge andmaintain connections between materials and places.These connections may be of varying nature andquality: focused on activity or technology, narrative,or driven by different motives and perspectives. Whatmatters for design is only rarely descriptions of spacein a physical sense. The spatial layout of a site is ofcourse of importance, but even more so are theactivities taking place there. What constitutes place isa complex totality of social engagement with otherpeople, use of artifacts, information and livedexperience that is hard to pinpoint. Design is aprocess of both recognizing and transforming place.But place is a qualitative phenomena more thanquantitative. The phenomenological tradition gives ussome tools to approach everyday life by returning toconcrete things and occurrences rather thanabstractions describing them. Bread on a table is nota meal – it’s also the hands weary from a full day’swork dropping the knife, the children telling storiesfrom school, the remembrance of youth in the taste ofa familiar dish. This richness is hard to generalize indescriptive language. Our everyday life-world

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consists of this concreteness that falls between thepure objects of science. Understanding place calls forcollecting and cherishing the paradoxes andcomplexity of life-worlds, rather than unifying themin abstractions.

Research contextOver the past several years we have been exploringthe way in which space becomes place through theE.U.-funded ATELIER project, in collaboration withmasters students in Interaction design at MalmöUniversity’s School of Arts and Communication.ATELIER aims to make a contribution to ourunderstanding of inspirational forms of learning andthe creation of augmented educational environmentsfor architecture and interaction design studies.Further, ATELIER provides a technologicalinfrastructure that allows for the fluid capture andmanipulation of media and design representations,with the goal of supporting innovative designconceptualization and learning. Our partnerinstitution, the

ATELIER researchers have participated in twoextended projects with the graduate students:Augmenting spaces (fall 2002), and Semi-publicplaces (fall/spring 2003-’04). In the former, studentsdeveloped proposed interactive artefacts and servicesfor four different host companies/agencies; in thelatter students prototyped spatial augmentations forMalmö’s Central railway station.iii

Besides engaging the masters students in concretedesign activities in connection with real-world clientsand contexts, both projects were conceived of asproviding them with a “toolbox” of differentinteraction design methodologies. Several of thesemethods were drawn from practices coming fromoutside of traditional digital systems development,specifically exploratory games, performance andillumination, and mixed-object architectural models.

Methods1. Exploratory gamesIn Malmö we have (even before ATELIER) usedcard games as a participatory design technique toexplore what’s happening in a place. The cards wereaugmented with RFID tags that maintained links tovideos and images collected in field studies. A goalfor the games is to set up imaginary situations thatcomplement reflective understanding of practice.While the media attached to the cards were from theproject at hand, the player is free to interpret them inany way they want.

In the first round of one possible game, all cards areplaced on the RFID tag reader, and the digital contentis thus displayed [Fig. 1]. The first player places acard on the table and gives a tentative title to thestory that is to be built. The second player will alsoplay one card and continue to develop the story. Aplayer can also pass, just as in poker, if they feeluncomfortable with the story or if their cards do notmatch. After the second player the third continuesand so on. The game is played until there is a story onthe table that the group feels is valid and a consensualnarrative has been formed [Fig. 2].

2. Performance and illuminationIn both Semi-public places and Augmenting spaceswe ran an improvisational design workshop,combining ethnographic practice and performance,with the goal of encouraging the students to engagein a directly physical, felt way with the life of peoplepotentially affected by their designs (a means of“getting practice under your skin”). In this practice(which was based upon a workshop run by BrendaLaurel at Art Center College of Design in the summerof 2000iv) students set out with video cameras tocapture footage of an inhabitant of their designcontext engaged in a work practice. The resultingmaterial was then back-projected upon a large screenin the studio, and the students rehearsed “playingback” the gestures and movements by memorythrough their own bodies [Figs. 3&4].Improvisational design (or “body mimicking,” as wecalled it) has the potential to generate critique ofexisting work environments and sequences, as well tosuggest new opportunities.

Another technique we worked with in theAugmenting spaces project was to explore thepotential for illumination to inflect use qualities. Inthis exercise, students analyzed the illuminationqualities present in their host context. The groupworking with the emergency room unit at the MalmöGeneral Hospital, for example, identified soft, flatlighting coming from above (mostly fluorescenttubes) as the predominate light in their use context.They then recreated as closely as possible in thestudio the opposite illumination qualities (hard,directional light coming from below, in the case ofthe emergency room students, not unlike a disco orstage set). Their existing physical prototype was thenvideotaped under these conditions, as a means ofexploring the way in which their sense of theprototype was changed by the new illuminationconditions.

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3. Mixed-media objectsWithin the ATELIER project we believe that Mixed-media objects can work as a powerful designresource for illustrating and sharing project-relevantknowledge and for supporting collaborative work. Amixed media object is a tangible object augmented bya digital representation. The linkage between the twois provided by an RFID tag or barcode, and therepresentation exists as a image, sound or video filein a hypermedia database. Inspired by howarchitecture students work with scale models, wethought a ‘Mixed-media model’ could be aninteresting way for the interaction design students toget an overview of Malmö Central Station in theSemi-public places project.

As a tool for initial dialogue and informal sharing ofinsights and reflections it worked quite well, aseveryone seemed to relate to the place in veryconcrete ways. It also highlighted all the places andinformation that were still undiscovered, and thusworked as a tool for deciding what to do next, andhow to divide the space and future studies among thestudents. The combination of spatial overview andspecific representations of visual or auralcharacteristics of the space also made the texturalcontrasts between different zones of the stationimmediately apparent [Fig. 5].

A further use of the model was through projectedmappings. ‘Mappings’ are inspired by architectureand city planning, and the method was introduced tothe interaction design students in the very beginningof the Semi-public places project as a means ofannotating observations in the context of their study -in this case at Malmö Central station. They were toldto choose a variety of perspectives for theirobservations such as ‘means of transportation insideand outside the station’, ‘private – semi-public –public places/zones within the station’, etc [Fig. 6].

Before going on the fieldtrip they gathered a 2D top-view plan of the site, some sheets of semi-transparentpaper and a selection of coloured pencils used to addannotations and indicate different perspectives on thepapers. Annotations were done on the fly, and thenthey were further refined and analysed back in thestudio, by overlaying different types of mappings,and by digitalising them and projection them onto theMixed-media model.

Conclusions and lessons learnedWe have integrated these methods into educationalprojects over the past two years with some successes.More importantly, we have gained insights into how

the techniques can be more effectively deployed inthe design education process. One limitation in ourcapacity to evaluate the usefulness of thesetechniques is the fact that they are presented in thecontext of a foundational course, in which a “toolkit”of diverse design methodologies are introduced aspart of a larger design project. Although the game,performance and architectural techniques have thusnot been individually linked to design outcomes, wehave conducted debriefings of the students followingthe projects, and have acquired anecdotal evidenceconfirming the usefulness of the methods.

It is clear to us that techniques coming from outsideof traditional design and systems development helpcreate a climate of awareness in which moreinnovative work can be done. As an example,although the “body mimicking” exercise did notalways have discernable impact upon thedevelopment of design concepts, students did testifyto a new awareness of the importance of bodyrhythms in understanding the use qualities ofdesigned objects. The students went on to suggestways in which the perception of work rhythms in thebody mimicking exercise could be enhanced throughthe use of music as complement or counterpoint tothe unique beat established by different sequences ofmovements and gestures. A similar response emergedwhen we asked students to reflect upon theillumination exercise.

One area in which we need to work further is in thetiming of these different techniques within a designprocess. We occasionally experienced difficultyestablishing the correct focus upon the Mixed-mediamodel; it remained more of an object to be finishedthan a tool with which to think and conduct analysis.This partly resulted from the fact that the model wasconstructed early in the design process, as afoundational research exercise before teambuildingand concept development began. We have alsoacquired a fair amount of experience with card gamesas a means of reflecting upon design process indebriefing sessions, but have worked less with thetechnique as a generative method within theATELIER projects.

However, our experience with these “cross dressing”techniques has generally been positive, and we lookforward to the development of an enhanced designethos, in which designers will intuitively be able toshift fluidly from technique to technique asappropriate, just as they would match their wardrobeto the plans for the evening.

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Figure 1. To the left a plastic card. To the right the card isplaced on the tag reader which then plays the digital mediain a large projection that can be viewed by everyone.

Figure 2. To the left cards laid out which eventuallyforms a commented story such as illustrated to theright.

Figure 3. Fredrick plays back the actions of acounterworker by memory.

Figure 4. Fredrick plays back the actions of acounterworker by memory.

Figure 5. Zones of the Malmö Central Stationprojected onto the mixed-media model.

Figure 6. Mappings of flow patterns projected ontothe mixed-media model.

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i Dourish, P., Where the action is-The Foundationsof Embodied Interaction , The MIT Press, London,2001.

ii Hallnäs, L and Redström, J , From Use toPresence: On the Expressions and Aesthetics ofEveryday Computational Things, A C MTransactions on Computer-Human Interaction,Vol. 9, No. 2, June 2002.

iii Here is the introduction for Semi-public places:

The Malmö Central train station is in a state ofchange. The opening of the bridge to Denmark in2000 transformed the station from a destination ofprimarily domestic travel to a new internationalgateway and an important hub for commuting to andfrom Copenhagen. Conversely, the inauguration ofthe Malmö tunnel project in 2010--with theintroduction of intermediate stops betweenCopenhagen and the Central station—promises toalter the patterns of usage of the station, as peopleembark and disembark from metro stops nearer theirhomes.

But the character of the station has never been fullydefined just by the brief passage of harriedcommuters. The Central station has also historicallyserved as a destination in itself and a place ofsignificance for private lives. In Henning Mankell'sthriller "Mördare utan ansikte" (Murderers withoutfaces), for example, the protagonist and his estrangedwife chose to meet at the station for a drink, and playout a scene of great emotional vulnerability. Everyday, in fact, the station is the site of intenseexperiences of separation and reunion. The stationcan thus be said to be a quintessential example of asemi-public place.

As an SPP, the Central station functions as a locus ofcommerce, travel, administration, and entertainmentactivities, populated by a diverse group ofcommuters, travellers, merchants, governmentofficials, and inhabitants of the surroundingcommunity. It also serves as a transitional space,through which people move—and graduallyadapt—from their home environments to the publicsphere of work, taking on new roles and behaviours.

Previous design projects directed towards publicfacilities such as train stations and airports havetended to focus upon the experience of travel as ameans of proposing spatial augmentations and newdigital services, but we believe that this approach is

too limited to benefit the Central station. Onestrength of interaction design practice is the capacityto extract meaningful information from theexperience of individual users, and thus build up anuanced picture of a complex environment.

iv And is documented in Brenda Laurel (ed.), DesignResearch: Methods and Perspectives (Cambridge,MIT Press, 2003), pp. 49-54.