Designing From Within

• An experience-based approach to designing collaborative interactive performance

• explored public interaction with digital technology through the practice-based inquiry of an inter-disciplinary team of interaction designers and musicians

• http://humanaquarium.org/CHI2011_humanaquariumfinalv2.pdf

Designing From Within 2

• literally situating the designers within the performance/use space
• assuming the roles both of performers and of designers

humanaquarium was developed & refined over a year's worth of public performances (2009-2011)

• CHI Interactivity Special Performances, Vancouver
• The User in Flux, Intersections Digital Studios, Emily Carr
• Jam 45, Culture Lab, Newcastle upon Tyne
• ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces, Saarbrucken
• BBC Free Thinking Festival, Sage Gateshead, Gateshead
• interspace2010, Banff Centre, Banff
• Webdesign International Festival, Limoges
• Maker Faire UK, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Culture Lab Relaunch, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Dove Marine Laboratory, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Public Announcement, Dance City, Newcastle upon Tyne

The starting point

• The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

• a large public gallery with a constantly changing programme of exhibitions

• observation that:

  • the exhibition curators are left to live with the artworks
  • often spending up to eight hours a day in their company

Lived-with experience

• this long-term relationship with the art leads to a gradual process of discovery over the life of the exhibition, which may last up to several months

• deeper level of details often emerge over time as conceptual and linguistic connections are untangled and made sense of

co-experiencing the works

• usually, these leaps in understanding occur in the course of discussion, co-experiencing the works with visitors and other staff

Research in the wild

• research practice stems from our awareness that investigating human experience in the laboratory is necessarily exclusive of many of the contextual factors found in real world environments

Practice Echoes

• this practice echoes approaches such as:
  • Gaver et al.'s long-term installations of unique technologies into people's homes
  • Wallace's crafting of bespoke jewellery pieces for individual subjects
• situated outside the laboratory, allowing a genuine interrogation of the cultural context under investigation

humanaquarium in action

Reflections

• we started considering the experiences of curatorial staff living with artworks over extended periods of time
• the voice that was always missing from this conversation was that of the creator him/herself

• designing from within is in contrast with Gaver's cultural commentators or Hook et al's use of documentary as an investigatory tool
  • both which use an outsider's account of a design and then communicate it back to the designer

• situating ourselves within the design and taking the role of performer during the humanaquarium performance allowed
  • first-hand experience
  • simultaneous dialogical exchange with users
  • leading to a number of insights that may have been overlooked in a traditional design process

Insights

• A tension emerged between:
  • our instincts and desires as musicians to make more complex and (to us) more satisfying musical pieces
  • and the necessity to retain a simplicity and transparency in our compositions
    • to allow passing viewers to instantly collaborate with us

Insights 2

• we observed numerous peripheral interactions between participants that took place during the performance
• many interesting social encounters were going on at the sidelines of the participantsâ primary engagement with the interactive performance
  • despite the fact that the performer-focused format of these works did not actively encourage or facilitate these kinds of interaction

Setting the scene

• stepping back from the forefront of the installation, we cast ourselves in the role of carnival barkers and fantastical zookeepers

Our roles as performers

• shifted to a strictly supporting capacity
  • what Benford and Giannachi term orchestrators of the experience
  • primary role was to facilitate participants' trajectories â i.e. the paths of discovery and exploration they followed as they encountered and experienced the work

Sharing private experiences with others

• how participants chose to share (or conceal) their private individual experience with friends, family, or peers

• On one occasion a child repeatedly insisted to her parents that when she asked the bird specific questions (like favourite colour, or name)
• the bird responded with content that we, as the programmers, knew was not contained in the birdâs phrase bank

• She made up a very detailed description of the conversation she insisted that she had had (which we did not choose to contradict!)

• configuring the installation to use the asymmetric telephone interface allowed us

• an easy way to examine how people learned the interaction scheme and then pass on this learning to their peers through the aforementioned variety of direct and indirect means

Performing and Music-Making

• how participants were able to use the Nightingallery installation to explicitly perform and engage in music-making activities

• Participants rapidly discovered that even speaking or singing quietly would still cause the bird to respond with an audible musical birdsong corresponding to what they had said or sung
• Shy participants could thereby allow the bird to do the performing rather than risk being heard singing themselves, often cupping their hands over the microphone so that their own vocal contributions were inaudible to others sharing the space.