This paper presents a case study exploring the use of speculative artefacts framed within the Fictional Inquiry co-design technique. The case is derived from a project investigating current practices and potential future strategies to improve patients’ hand hygiene standards at the Department of Oncology of Aarhus University Hospital. This paper explores how five speculative artefacts were designed and used to inquire into participants’ experiences of their hand hygiene, both concerning current practice and future ideas. Our study demonstrates how the speculative artefacts used in Fictional Inquiry supported participant’s immersion and engagement in co-design sessions and how the artefacts were used to maintain momentum throughout the session.

In this paper we describe results from testing coMotion, a shape-changing bench, in three different contexts: a concert hall foyer, an airport departure hall and a shopping mall. We have gathered insights from more than 120 people, with regard to how users experience and make sense of the bench's shape changing capability. The paper applies McCarthy and Wright's six different sense making processes ( anticipating, connecting, interpreting, reflecting, appropriating and recounting ) as an instrument to analyse people's experience with shape-changing furniture in the wild. The paper also introduces exploring as a seventh sense making process. Based on this analysis, the paper points to three relevant aspects when designing shape-changing artefacts for the wild, namely: 1) Affordance of shape-changing interfaces, 2) Transitions between background and foreground and 3) Interpreting physically dynamic objects.

In this paper we introduce coMotion, a shape-changing bench. We explore how physical changes of the bench can shape social situations and how contextual atmospheres may affect users' experience of the shape-changing bench and its surroundings. The bench was tested in three different contexts; a concert hall, an airport and a shopping mall. We gathered insights from more than 120 people, as they unexpectedly encountered the shape changing capabilities of the bench. By taking the user tests out of the lab and into the wild, we explored the influence of context on the users experience of a shape-changing interface, as well as on the experienced atmospheres.

This paper presents the concept of Embodied Habituation as an architectural approach to designing contextualized technologies. It does so by identifying Middle Ground Experiences acknowledging how spaces are inhabited with ambiguous qualities that affect people emotionally. The research is based on the development and evaluation of Kidkit, which is interactive furniture designed for young children who are going to visit a hospitalized relative with fatal injuries for the first time. Kidkit empowers the child to engage and be present by shaping Middle Ground Experiences in the hospital ward environment that is full of intimidating medical equipment and alarms. The evaluation results indicate collective rewards gained when children succeed in Embodied Habituation. Finally, the paper discusses how Middle Ground Experiences inevitably establish grounds for how we design for spatial experiences within the interaction design community.

This paper presents the concept of Embodied Habituation as an architectural approach to designing contextualized technologies. It does so by identifying Middle Ground Experiences acknowledging how spaces are inhabited with ambiguous qualities that affect people emotionally. The research is based on the development and evaluation of Kidkit, which is interactive furniture designed for young children who are going to visit a hospitalized relative with fatal injuries for the first time. Kidkit empowers the child to engage and be present by shaping Middle Ground Experiences in the hospital ward environment that is full of intimidating medical equipment and alarms. The evaluation results indicate collective rewards gained when children succeed in Embodied Habituation. Finally, the paper discusses how Middle Ground Experiences inevitably establish grounds for how we design for spatial experiences within the interaction design community.

In the field of practice-based research we articulate the dilemma that emerges as the creative designer embraces the role of being an interaction design researcher. We exemplify the dilemma in a specific design case originating from a PhD project. In this case, we use sketching to illustrate how the design researcher embodies the creative designer at all times. We show how the dilemma becomes tangible in the conversation with the material when having to manage a set of design constraints, concerns and sensibilities. We acknowledge that when taking on both roles at the same time there are two different clients with different agendas to serve. Where one is concerned with making the best possible product the other pertains to the contribution of knowledge. Finally, we state the importance of having a strong research question when balancing a research program while at the same time creating a new, desired reality.