Agency Sensitive Design: Feedback

18 March 2011 a response from Petra

My Questions to Petra:

Q1) What do you think about making my research process itself Agency-sensitive as well? (You know that main aim of the research is to understand how we may design for relational agency. In order to understand it, it might be good idea to have a research approach, which is agency-sensitive too. I very liked the idea. Basically, we try to sensitize our 'research process' in order to explore and understand agency sensitive 'design process'. For instance, by taking a relational constructivist research approach. You may see a summary of this approach here: http://bit.ly/foEczH This approach may require a dialogical understanding and hence relatively more active involvement of me to the design process, so participants and me will co-construct the understanding.)

Q2) What do you think about having different analysis methods for the different phases of the workshops? (In fact, this is parallel to first question. Rather than having one fixed methodology for understanding whole workshop processes, I might use different approaches to understand each workshop session. As you probably know, the workshop involves 6 sessions and in order to interpret workshop data, it might be good to be 'sensitive' to heterogeneity of sessions and different forms of knowing involved in each session.)

Her answers:

Re: Q1) Interesting thought. I only have one concern - the difficulty to separate the two in the analysis process; the two being: -
(a) testing and probing the participants' Agency-sensitive awareness and use of technology -(b) doing so by using Agency-sensitive process methods
(b) basically brings another big variable into the mix and how this may influence the possible outcomes is difficult to know beforehand. But the most interesting questions perhaps is how this may change the results!

The idea is a bit radical - which I like, but you have to deploy it carefully, I think. I would suggest that you approach the workshop in two stages: In the first part, your users focus on the design task (as planned so far), this is then documented in a questionnaire, short interviews, and your video of what happened. And in the second part, that is, when your participants are involved in the next set of experiments, the focus is more on negotiating the design task and, with it, co-constructing the understanding. I would imagine that you would have to document and later interpret this stage differently, due to the participants being more process and dialogue focused (rather than task and outcome).

Re analysis: The data gathering will be more collaborative and discussion based in this 2nd stage (I assume) and you won't be able to look at it from a third perspective in your analysis - if the participants co-construct the understanding, than, in some sense, your making sense of the process already has started - in the workshop. And, perhaps, your analysis could be more a systematic documentation of the co-construction process, that is how understanding and experimentation develops, rather than a retrospective analysis. A situated analysis, so to say :)

And it would of course be interesting to see, how these documented results and what the participants say in it (it wouldn't be so much an interview, where you ask the questions, but you recording their discussions and your discussions with them) compare to the documented results from the first part, where you (and the research objective) play a more external role. One of the reasons for my suggestion is that, for this 2nd agency sensitive approach, you'll have to involve participants in some of the research questions that you're investigating and this will most certainly influence how they will approach the task. So doing it from the start will give you different results than if you hadn't . On the other hand, it will be very interesting to see how the participants' understanding - and probably also yours- changes by focusing on the process and a collaborative, more (obviously) situated approach. So, in short, yes, I find this methodology very interesting but one needs to acknowledge that they will produce different results. How they differ and why could become a very interesting section of your paper.

You're getting more into research methodology development with this, which is interesting, but you need to be conscious of this different 'lens' that you're applying to your research question. Re Q2) - already discussed above.

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11 March 2011 Andy

Three main points to be considered:

i - thinking the experiment design something like 2x2 factorial design might be useful for guiding your thinking as a conceptual apparatus. you do not have to do exactly in the same way like 2x2 factorial design but use it to further structure your workshop and narrow down the scope. to identify some patterns that correlate with pre-configurations or pre-tunings.

ii - To provide a clearer mapping between workshop format elements and preconfigurations and "forms of knowing" on a table.

iii- you need a methodology of analysis, your overall research methodology is fine but for the analysis part you need a more specific ground or something like a theory or territory. you need to stand on something. weakness is in final analysis part.

how are you gonna analyze the video?
What are your observables? how does your analysis method work towards the research questions you have?
you may use ANT's vocabulary.
how do you characterize design process?
How do you know there is a design process in front of you?
How does one know there is a relation emerged or performed out? is it the frequency of the event? dominance? how would you know that?
you need to explain to the reader your method of analysis!

look at the question you have.

you need to document the possible ways to answer
ask How do I actually answer that? what are the data analysis?
How am I actually gonna analyse it?
what will you observe?
you donot need to know what they are exactly, but you should have an idea of things and a predictive direction
you may first need to convince your self that there will be observable differences.
you are going after diversity of relations, are these sufficient enough to create that difference? may be this is an empirical question. but just have a general idea.
it is kind of a grounded approach i.e. coding and set of questions.

Additional comments:
- you do not need to ask too many questions to the participants. you task is already very hard. you will analyze relations across different media, posters video etc in a qualitative way.

- C&C:

How do people think about their relations with technology and others in colloborative design situation. that's the cognition part.
For the creativity, we have produced new relations that are unexpected by means of the configurational changes or modifications. people making somthing new might be enough for the notion of creativity.
you might have a perspective that creative possibilities of interactions are modified or attenuated by the relational agency between people and technology. and I set up conditions in whihc I can demonstrate in w1 and w2 that pre-configurations of relations agency, fix task and fix configurations produce different set of relations and forms of relations. just keep it simple.
give me theoretical reasons why you say that and explain clearly to me how you analyzed data.

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3 March 2011 Rob

Three main points to be revised for workshop design:

- Design of technologies to be used in workshop3 should be re-thought. how they will be helping or working or supporting the activities or goals? availability and possibility of non-digital objects may prevent participants to use digital technology in perform phase after performing very bodily non-digital activities.

- The questions for the participants might be required and helpful.

- Task of group 2 should be better defined. or its rationale behind should be better explained.

C&C:
- The structure and argument might be based on two research domains: participatory design and distributed cognition. you need to relate or connect to some form of cognition.
- How might a relational view of agency might be useful or help fostering improvised and emergent actions, non-prescriptive ways of knowing and relating?
- How might we design for relational agency? how might we design for relational agency in order to facilitate creativity in design and use phase?

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2 February 2011 Petra

idea of assemblage / network is really useful.
it would be good to have at least a rudimentary sense of adaptability in technological agents. in the previous ones they were unaware of things or any parallel things happening. you may do a final workshop or performance with networked agents, sometime in September.
you have a participatory design workshop in your next two workshops, but then in the technological workshop it will be much more about the use of the technology/agents.
Participants may take two roles:
(1) they can design the agents
(2) they can use the agents ~deployment
looking at these two things is important because we can see where and how agency arises
agency is exhibited both in the design of agents and they way you use them and integrate them into the environment (asking participants to do both is too demanding and might lead to complicated and confusing results, they have to assemble and define the network and use. it will become quite complicated to evaluate the results)
It might be interesting to involve participants in assembling and defining the capabilities of the agents.
(a) task fixed and they have to assemble the network in order to negotiate the task
(b) they have an assembled network or assemblage and they can negotiate the use
or in other words
(a) making design decisions on technological capability of agents
(b) making design decision on how to use or repurpose or appropriate already given technological capabilities
It would be still good to look at Erin Manning's workshop, enabling constraints, it may help you to see how you can constrain things in order people to become creative.
if you provide too much freedom, the workshop may end up with endless discussions.
if u tell people you can do anything in order this task to be done. It gets complicated due to lots of choices. People may not be aware why they made certain decision. For the evaluation you need to know why they made those decisions.
opening up design process to PD activities is a good step but you should not open up everything.
so the levels of openness or participation can be different in different workshop sessions.
session 1: the most open and participatory: participants are involved in both design and production phase
session 2: participants are involved in only production phase (design of capabilities of tech agents to fulfill a certain task) (defining role of non-human agents)
sessions 3: participant are involved in only use phase (design in use by using a given configuration of agents and network) (what human agents can do with non-human agents)
this can give much more clearresults in terms of understanding the importance of being involved in various stages
you may have mixed groups novice and expert
alternatively you may target any of your questions in your workshop
>> is it important use expert users? (more familiar people to IXD)
>> should we mix expert and novice users?
>> is it better to have the smae people in all design phase and decisions? etc ...
Think about the outcomes and design the workshops based on the outcomes you want to get. imagine you choose anly the novice people then what will design responses mean?what happens if experts are involved in? what happens if the groups is mixed?
Think basically whatever kind of workshop set up or group mix can affect or influence your results? if outcomes will sufficiently work in to your study or they open up the questions..
at least you may have group members with different expertise
eval - > in situ notes and feedback from participants, interviews and video observations
eval - > at each phase during the process.(sheets, or table, questions, may be add something by them, )
you should not influence them! you are in there always, (I think I should be there by workshop design, and facilitation of activity structure and infra and tools)
they should be aware of why they selected particular thing/config or decision but not the other , continue evaluation, whihc lead s to very aware process and understanding. if the ywant to use the existing network they should explain it.. creativity, your role should be organizational (or a designer! I think at least in one of the m I should be a co-designer too)
you are there anyway. You really want to see the relationships and tunings little shifts comin out of design process but not their capacity to negotiate with you.
investigate and explore qualities by observations, interviews and video
--ask specific questions related to agency and sensitiveness; how they feel, what kind of agency they had etc
You want to know how they deal with them not how you deal with them?????
You need to be able to locate the agency, you have to ask when or at which stage they felt agency, how this notions of space, roles and technology shifted. their role and awareness, or role of any other things, how they change, that is ongoing eval process, they can make little notes. They have to be aware of these changing things to give feedback.
human interacting with tech in a specific context. '
how many tasks, what questions to ask? think what you want to understand about ASD in PD context. This is your target and you set the stage for this, where you can find answer to these questions.

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16 December 2010 Ina Wagner

trying different types of interactions in the next workshops might be useful, experimenting some other parameters or modalities or dimensions.
what is your inventory of ways of exerting agency.
this study could be related to looking at/considering/exploring different dimensions or resources when designing for agency!
to understand what ASD mean by designing the activities.
multi-modal analysis can be useful as a guide to systematically analyse the workshops
UCD+ASD would be a very different kind of research, it might be the next step after your thesis. Your previous workshops were not UCD and doing a UCD at this point might break the coherence of thesis. You may situate your research in the area of interaction design instead of UCD.

15 December 2010 Rob

There are different design processes, and it may not be possible to find a generic process of design. instead we can concentrate on individual strategies employed in various UCD or PD cases. For instance, the strategies to involve users in design. job is to identify approaches to promote agency. lo-fi prototypes how well does that allow users to consider promote agency (of their own or of others)
different design strategies he uses to assess usability. as an example.
some of the strategies might be more suitable for agency sensitiveness.
how do you get people to think about their agency (relationality and invite materials to participate, and explicate their presence/contribution)?
how about tuning and awareness?
modify and adapt the existing techniques, by using your lenses, by making people see through these lenses or making designers see through them.
what would I do differently? guide question!
TODOs
- make a taxonomy of strategies or techniques in different phases of design process, decide on what to choose, think about how you can conduct your workshops
- you may change your case for the next workshops, you do not need to keep the wearable environments goal or activities.
  - you can find a familiar product/system/case for all
  - you can find an already existing but may not be familiar. (but still try to find somewhat a relevant one)

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9 December 2010 Andy

Be clear about the ASD's contribution. Do you target design process or content (the case, object, people etc.)? (highlighting the fact that the process and content are intertwined). The design (product) vs design (process)

rephrasing the overal aim:
- developing sensitivities in design process can promote agency and its diversity and allows us to recognize and acknowledge relational and emergent nature of agency (embodiment of humans and artifacts).
you may need to connect the outcomes of design process with the qualities of the ASD embodied in design process. or more generally, it would be make your analysis and argument stronger if you can identify effects generated specifically by the ASD pratices or qualities.
- there can be four options (or more) for identifying the ASD's effects
  - conduct two case studies with and without the ASD
  - work on design of a well-known object
  - re-design an already existing system/artifact
  - critically evaluate a body of systems/objects like Friedman or Munster
VSD related studies do not talk about design process but about the content. the qualities of designed artifact or system. However, you may find some reflections on the process in their longer publications/reports.
look at the VSD, reflective design and their way of situating their approach, of proving their approach and of dealing with process matters. most of the VSD projects are redesigns.
your approach is less related with meta-structure than the details. The details and micro-level sensitivities.
you may find some sample cases from HCI text book and Harvard Business Schools reports.
for instance, the degree of configurability can change according to the agency-sensitiveness.
a chapter for your in-depth analysis of workshops 3 and 4 and another for the effects of the ASD.

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25 November 2010 Rob

Each item in the lenses should be directly connected with the agency sensitiveness
- For instance, the item related to visibility of aims, assumptions and decisions is too generic. It describes generally a good practice, it is not specific to agency sensitiveness. Among them assumptions could be the most specific one in terms of agency.
You need to define the different actors’ point of view in the process. Each actor may see the design process from his/her Agency-Sensitive Lens. it may not be a good idea to develop a lens just for the actor who has the “traditional” designer role. Users might be also productive, creative and might have initiative for the agency sensitiveness (Kinect hacking!, Microsoft’s non-agency-sensitive design practice, design & corporate strategy. Although it was because of company’s profitability goals, they might have missed a bigger opportunity for creating a large ecosystem around kinect, which may indeed be much more profitable in the mid- or long-term as a bonus).

o Who might be the actors? What could be their relations and roles?

o It is only after you define those actors and relations that you can make claims about agency sensitiveness.

o We might have different lenses for different actors?

o We might facilitate seeing from the lenses from other actors, which very interestingly takes us to the beginning of our research journey where I photographed Yeliz in relation to landscape from different points of views. And looked for the ways of providing this third person point of view or experience literally. That’s really interesting.

We should integrate the role of material performativity/agency into the model, it is one of the critical parts of the relational agency equation. We shouldn’t assume a fixed material performativity, it can be and is very dynamical and situated. We need to highlight its performative characteristics. There are many other research or practice domains dealing with the material agency such as game or medical domains. The results of this research may demonstrate them how differently and sensitively we can design for agency.
- What are the challenges and potentials about
  - designing with technological agents/agency?
  - designing for technological agents/agency
- May be a lens for the machine point of view.

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11 November 2010 Rob
- Not adding another layer but it is really focusing on different aspects
- There are two metaphors for applying ASD to other design methodologies: lens and (software) interface
- Methodology + problem should be considered together, when assessment is being made!
- How practical are ASD tools to use it?
- There are other design methods that have less explicit consideration of agency, so you might need to address the cases where ASD is applied to those other design methodologies.
- Read Gero’s FBS model. Might be useful for relating agency and function, for understanding how your model fits in that theory.
- Read 4 Lenses paper (education domain), pay attention to the way they use language and their use of not only questions but also activities. It can be helpful for you to answer these questions (questions for assessing agency sensitivity) for your framework.
- Follow the steps you've written on your plan.
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14 July 2010 Petra and Rob
The meeting notes pdf file.
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Wed 31 March, Rob

The limited role of environment. We should take better advantage of the space, its role is not significant in the current configurations
For the next workshop, we should integrate the environment in a more strong way. In this configuration, its role is too limited to providing a sound effect from a point in the space.
- We can use simulation strategy. Simulating the dumb boxes as if they are distributed into environment. Two possible and different scenarios:
  - Boxes in the environment sensing acting and communicating with the central system in environment
  - Or some other kind of technology embedded into environment

We should find out/determine whether the first one can be considered as smart environment or not?

Comp vision to simulate the boxes, or wizard of oz. we do not want the boxes or environment to be “smart”, and their behavior can be dumb as long as the mapping between sensing and action is simple-rule based??? (This may not be true, the definition of smartness is very critical here, higher levels of perception might correspond higher levels of agency)
We can either use small speakers, or boxes with only vibration motors, headphones might not be suitable in the case of effecting from environment,
Is “being able to consider a device as a part on environment” related to control?
- If the device is controlled by the environment, can we consider this device as a part of the environment? or
- If the device can act independently from the environmental system, can we claim that it is not part of the environment? or
- Can we consider anything outside of self as environment? or any immobile non-living things as environment? or
- Can we simply take a room with its floors, walls and ceilings as an environment, (this is kind of related to “immobility” of things).
If or not, the design of EC is the right one for the wearable environment concept, in terms of utilizing the features of both smart env. and wearable computing.

For the upcoming workshop, the sound coming from the speaker should be the same vibration sound coming from the ECv1.

Wed 16 March Petra
...

Wed 24 Feb 2010, Rob
- Role of the environment is important and keeping it as one of the main elements in the research formulation increases the novelty and appeal of the research, and It would be good to include the synthesis of wearable computing and smart environments to the research at the next stage. Even if the research becomes more complex, and even you fail, it will probably be a more exciting and insightful research.

- Priming activity and its effects should be kept in mind during design and evaluation of all activities, and the idea of enabling constraint is very inspiring one that should also be considered and aware of at least at the reflective level.

- Agency, perception and action of environment/the elements in the environment can provide new possibilities for enabling the shared agency. (Here, it is really hard to define what is environment and what is not. If “I” is considered as a separate entity from the environment, why are the walls or any other elements in the environment not considered so? Is the defining key factor being a living organism? Thus, can we claim that any other non-living thing outside my body can be considered as environment?) What does it mean to attribute the agency to environmental things? (Problem of attribution of agency should really be addressed very carefully.)

- Wizard of Oz as the enactment of shared agency!

- Kablan’s work on curiosity to see the idea of having more agency..

- PhD does not cover the whole research and is not an end.

Wed 27 January 2010, Petra&Rob
- it would be good to relate it to s2s s2o and s2e relations, relation of body with space andother bodies, habitual agencies and manipulation of agency.
- intro, motivation, research questions, literature, methodology, device dev, case study(pilot) and the others, and future work.
- need to provide motivation that will lead to something core to the interests of NIME (performance, bodies in space)-> what is it trying to invent? this motivation should also explain the choice of initial study: why a partner based activity with rope and SSD???>>> ideally with reference to existing research/experiments/eg comparison or inspiration!!! situate the study/paper into a bigger research context. provide a research trajectory, path and this is a pilot study of it.
- be honest about the limits of this initial device and also the small scale of the study.
- understanding yourself(agent) as an external limit (obstacle) or as a "rope", guide is becoming a mobile enviromental "agent",
- emphasis could be on position of sensor&change of meaning and change in sense of agency.
>> fabrication of device(s), evolution of devices based on case studies/experiments, devices to be smarter, sophisticated and networked.. the concept of wearable environments and 4 configuration could be integrated!
- be reflective about priming effect of rope activity, it all affects teh sense of control, perception and strategies.did all the strategies reflect the experience of using the rope? if not, identify the deviations from the rope model of communication. the grounding experience affects the participants perception of the agency of the device! yes this is in fact another important dimension of the experiment! guiding agent might be exactly in the role of obstacle if grounding experience was different.
- enabling constraints might be good term for the set up of activities.
- provide the rationale behind the activities/set ups.
- how does agency change acc to placement of devices
- tell the story, capture the attention with the motivation, why is it(shared agency) important? augmented senses,enactive interaction, sensory suplementation devices, shared agency, why in this way? flow of paper is important.
- rapid prototyping, informiing the next cycle, so future work should be connected to the findings of this study.
- point of observer should be third person not me! my point of view is the point of view of author/researcher
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Tue 15 December 09, Petra

- Read Erin Manning's paper on imagery spaces and changes on perception/imagination of space. Her paper might be useful for understanding the ways to approach the participants and discuss their experiences as a paper and to relate them to the research topic. Complexities, fine differences and tuning.
- Kate Stevens's works could be relevant to ability+perception->Agency/Action Poss.
- Rob's paper is a good example of giving the "humus" of the related field and also making connection with the learning. It would be better to find papers directly referencing to agency from supporting fields. Otherwise, we should find/take their relavant and key parts from the anchor or survey papers. Key words for the learning dimension of agency could include movement, physical, agency, perception and dance.
- For NIME paper, It would be better to make a study involving a small group of people (4-5) rather than doing self-experimentation. (If I could I am planning to do both!)
- Contact with Kristina (Petra to send me her contact info)
- For the pre-workshop study:

use little instructions and constraints and at the end let them play freely/improvise
think about what to learn, how does it relate to agency, where does it happen
change/reverse the behavior of performance device
prepare different sets of sound mapping with a variety of sounds (from the one using noise to the ones more melodical/beats) and observe how differently they behave/act and how memorizing/learning the relations or feedback rationale change.
it would be useful to use a resonance body.
mapping is always important for the investigation of the agency. It is a key determinant. In fact, mapping defines the agency of machine and affects the agency of humans.
role of proximity in user interaction scenarios
- think about the path from feedback to guidance to source for expression

- Network of agents.. interface as a prosthesis of the relation between man and space
- Assignments:

write a paragraph about what this research is about and what the case studies for? in lay language
write 4-5 user scenarios for your devices related to specific research questions
prepare more sound mappings to test during experiments
make the devices and wiimotes easily applicable to body and space

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Fri 04 December 09, Rob
- Built the performance devices asap - make them easy to attach into the environment ( glue, hooks etc), with a simple but good looking design. I might use some of the unused electronic parts from our curious places project.
- To generate sounds from the connection between the performance device and the surfaces in the environment rather than the device itself might be a more suitable choice in terms of research theme wearable environments.
- Beads by Ollie Bown might be useful for sound synthesis by Java,
- For the moment, it might be better to play with sound with only minim library and hence with processing
- Experiment the device and wiimote interfaces in unfamiliar context and spaces. (to intervene the established relations between the body and space, to experience different acoustics, to make the familiar strange, )
- A short paper to be submitted to NIME2010 is a good idea. Deadline is 29th of January and the outcomes of a self experimentation stage before the workshop can be used for the short paper. This experimentation stage can focus on changes in agency, and re-learning of the new relations / agencies and also expressive capacity. Expressive dimension is critical for NIME conference.
- Time plan: Built the devices and Wiimote interfaces in 2 weeks by 17th of December and then have a meeting with Petra and Rob and decide the next steps for the research and NIME paper.
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Fri 23 October 09, Rob
- to submit our research to a HCI comittee, we need to educate reviewers about our methodology
- result of submission and reviews do not point a need for a radical change in research formulation
- work with a very limited range palette of sensors and effectors
- it might be better not to force or impose design requirements or communication ways to performers/participants. they will do/discover/play by themselves. and we will relate them to those directions and otehr design concerns.
- there might be alternative ways to customize system response by performers, slider controls, switches etc..
- there migh be simple portable devices attachable to body or placed into the environment, these devices are to be configured by the performers for augmenting their expressive bodily movements.
- workshop prototyping with Wii controller and rangefinders
- Wii software controller- Oscilator
- Agency is still the major investigation area of the research
- effectors on body might be difficult to implement
- configuring and the concept of assemblages are good, keep them
- for the etchis application, remove mentions to case studies and use "will inform further research on designing interactive systems". bring the workshop to the front. shorten the technological descriptions of PhD research, separate the objectives of PhD and workshop. and briefly relate them.
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Fri 25 Sep 09, Petra
Identify your assumptions and test&verify them through workshop scenarios
- About workshop

stimulate interaction between performers in “desired” ways

create situations, how will it change

again what exactly do you want to learn
simple questions!!! Simple instructions!!!
A possibility is to design it with and without agent assemblages
Proximity -<> directionality of expression

Sensor<->effector coupling and relationships S2S, S2O, S2E

FOCUS on questions on

Change / amplification of agency/gesture/expression/engagement/intentionality?

FOCUS on questions on

What do you need to know for interface development (HW, SW, feedback)

- About ethics

Specify instructions

Give whole specifications (to ensure the safety of the sensors)

Semi-structured questionnaires

- Check infusion sensors
- Establish a connection between gesture <-> agency (not to capture gesture)
- Make readings on workshop, performance,
- Contact with (to-dos)

Ask for reimbursement for sensor procurement (departmental)
Ask for departmental permission for conducting a workshop at Sentient
Send Markus a list of sensors etc
Contact Lian Loke, Astrid Larssen (from UTS)
Contact with Cristina (to include different types of movements)
Contact with Alex after making the first preparation
Look for (and contact) PhD students from performance to collaborate
Contact with Katie about NICTA email account

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Fri 11-Sep-09, Rob
- Ethics applications for workshops and case study 1 (seperate applications, workshop app. -> 21 sept. and case study TBD before Dec., check first ethics panel in 2010 and the last one in 2009)

Application deadlines for Ethics:

2009

21 Sep, 6 October, 19 October, 19 October, 2 November, 16 November

2010

~19 Jan (not declared, last year's)

- Workshops to be conducted at the beginning of November
- Hardware (buy basic arduino kit, search for portable projector and wireless camera(battery powered?), send rob suggestions/options )
- Tentative work plan till February targeting two conferences DIS'10 and INTERACT'10,, also make sure to submit NIME'10 (at UTS)

Work plan Sep09-Feb10

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Fri 15- May-09, Rob

- HCI as a field to be contributed not a primary source of knowledge, there might be some technical design and evaluation processes to be utilized. The wisdom of HCI is partially embedded in Activity Theory..

- Relation between wearable computing and smart/responsive environments in terms of facilitating new embodied relations between humans and enviroment, how could they be combined/coupled to create new (blended) relations, potentials for action and meanin-making, enrich the authentic human experience and increase the phenomenal field of humans and bodily knowing.
- How many of wearable projects assume a pasive environment?
- How do smart environments rely on them?
- How many of them use wearables as active components (to create new forms of relationships) but not merely for technical convenience?
Role of performence as a "test-bed" for the adaptability of human-machine interface.
- why would someone adapt to the machine more than they have to do? (to experiment/challenge the potentials, and to discover new forms of relations and human-machine-environment associations..) by means of performance art which involves active physical involvement, curiosity and experimentative approach.

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Wed 06-May-09, Petra

- think about the memory of interfaces..

- define objectives for the research, "in order to do.." alligned with the research questions..

- definition of the key words (blending) in a narrative way in the intro chapter

- how do scientific and humanitarian approaches inform each other..

- how the roles/agencies of actors or elements in the research framework affect each other, how agencies change, how negotiation takes place?

- anaylze instructions during the preliminary experiments,

- make a research context diagram

- draft plan

o First week
• Framing the research
• Updating research questions
• Lit readings on
• Performance general and performance in HCI and Design
• Sections from the Closer book
• Merleau-Ponty
o Second week
• Making the skeleton of the proposal document
• Writing literature / background section
• Draft intro
o Third week
• Methodology and our approach (and presentation and explanation of preliminary performative experiments and
discussion of ~Preliminary results
• Introduction section
• Research context
• Research scope
• Research problem
• Significance
• Contribution- (conceptual, methodological, technological)
• Approach
• Draft Study Plan and resources

Meeting Topics Document

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Fri 20-March-09, Petra

- till the end of April, determining the research theme, research questions and potential outcomes

- ~~17-june proposal presentation

- proposing and focusing on formal outcomes is difficult and not preferable (like design guidelines).

- we need to find a balance between research methodologies

- subjective conviction vs scientific objectivity

- find a place between these poles. oscillation ..

- analyze and discuss the proposal of Thecla's study conceptually, theoretically, and methodologically,

extracts from her study in a file with annotation. (in two weeks)

summary of her aims. questions and outcomes and potential connections with our research..

- one of the focus of the research could be comparing exactly this oscillation and discussion of describing the experiential relations in the world with these different types of approaches, (practice based, performative or scientific ),

- self critical discussion about choices, methods, I can use my previous experience of scientific research with the current more performative and practice based one for a critical comparison.

- we can find our new terms for describing the embodied interaction cases.

- a little research about the process of getting know each other in phenomenology and cognitive science (concepts of strangeness and uncertainty )

- things that encourage interaction and the things that do not

- roles of participant, performer and observer, effect of observer on participants to determine the paths of interaction and roles of actors.

- plasticity of surface of environment which provides very well fitted affordances..

- feeling and need of being in security during a relation

- the things that makes the difference in interpreting the same representation (for this case it is photos) of the relation. situations that make it possible to establish a right empathy ..

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Fri 13-March-09, Rob

- The best (whatever the standard) interactions may not necessarily involve AI methods and higher levels of system autonomy. Ping pong game, mirrors.. I will think about the relationship between AI-Interactions and what the properties of a desirable interaction are.. like play and flow state,

Parallel to this, the property of interaction that makes it attractive or engaging is probably related with both the outcome (whether it is 1-1 or 1-N relation) and the way that outcome is obtained/experienced.

- I will investigate the Role of Play in interactions and developmental psychology lit. (due in two weeks)

- Ignoring the game literature and game research studies might cause some gaps and missing points on the research path.

- Developing and promising design guidelines for embodied interfaces might be hard to realize, thus it might be more doable that introducing a framework on what the design issues are by

evaluating the existing frameworks with the proposed framework. The focus of framework involves the concepts that I recently dealt with.

- I will make some readings about Situated cognition by Clancey (due in two weeks).

- I need to rethink the usage of the term emergent affordances for describing the relations with environment and tools in a subjective manner. I think I will make a blog entry about customizable vs emergent affordances ( asap : ) )..

- Efforts to make software suitable for stylistic usage as for the cases of musical instruments.

- (Control related) trade off-> On the one hand making something so complex (like a piano) with which it is possible to create a multitude of different combinations is powerful and gives great scope for personal expression, but the learning curve is likely to become tedious with dedicated practice required. One the other hand, making something so simple (like the ‘play’ button on a CD-player) carries little interactive interest after the first one or two interactions.

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Fri 06-March-09, Petra

- Performative research approach focusing on relations and situations could be useful for the next phase of the research.

- Roles of nature/environment from passive to active (from the concept of photo project)

- the same relation could be examined by different perspectives (by the eyes or experience of interacts, by the environment and by the observer(camera?) )

- I will further elaborate the concept of the photo project by writing a statement:

i. first motivation behind the project

ii. second what the outcomes tell us

iii. third how can they relate to our research in terms of ubiquitous computing, new interface relations by considering different levels of interpretation, biological, cultural. material..

- I will make a selective and critical read and extraction of Thecla's PhD thesis.

- A blog (apart from the assembla and more informal ) to show my research study and relevant items might be useful.. (I will try..)

- Our whole research study could be comprised of a series of little experiments and at the end this whole set of experiments, questions, possible answers might be the outcome.

- I will think about the role of interfaces/systems as tool-media, and why I want to do a comparative study of them? Why is it important?

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Fri 19-12-08

- I will do a research log combining recent concepts.
- I will send you the links for two thesis works.
- You will send me the name of a book related to mapping and maps.
- I will think about research scope (feasibility of ideas, contributions conceptual, technological- sw or hw)
- Some specific scenarios for testing the concepts in a more confined manner
- Investigate the concept of mapping in various fields.
- think about touring -- navigation relation..
- interfaciality paper.

Wed 10-12-08

- I will go one step further and try to figure out some constructive points from the synthesis Norman and De Certeau related to my research
- I will describe the activities in my project plan.
- I will draw a network diagram. Action points and relations will be identified.
- You will consult our deadline for the proposal.
- I will further investigate the works of Thecla Schiphorst, (Actually, I found her PhD thesis, you may also check it-> http://www.sfu.ca/~tschipho/PhD/PhD_thesis.html)
- I will think about in terms of methodological, conceptual and technological contributions.. (an innovative way in one of them)

For our next meeting we will discuss:
- Material to interface paper from Media Art Histories book by Oliver Grau
- Two chapters of the Closer Book by Suzan Kozel
- Review of PhD thesis in hand and decide the parts to be investigated.
- New project plan.

Wed 2008-11-26
Summary - 9

importance of transferring the knowledge to specic domain
importance of making a critical argument
prepare a schedule and timeline for the period till probation presentation.
- put milestones (coming from proposal chapters)
- short term and long term time plan
- timeline
two phases of research
- feeding/reading/digesting
- applying this info to a a work product or prototype(iterative/evolutionary development)

regular update of web research diary
asking critical questions about the reading materials (intellectual thinking) 1-3 questions
providing verification or justifications for the potentials (what has been done so far), strengths , weaknesses, opportunuties and threads.

Wed 2008-11-19

Summary - 8

There are 3 things to do in next three weeks.

1. Finish De Certeau's book and review it
2. Synthesize Norman and De Certeau's books, critically investigate connections. ask questions and make intellectual arguments on relevant parts or if they are not relevant i will explain in a logical way.
3. Formulate the start point, 3 examples of what I want to do and what I do not want to do!
During this time, I will also ask critical questions to my self! and find the answers..
I will check the works of Rafaela Lozano-Hemmer..
I will also do a little artwork related to my research, i should start think about it.
I need to define a scope, constraints with affordances for my research, free fall??
I need to start thinking differently, critically..

Wed 2008-11-05

Summary - 7

- could SIMs game logic be considered as affordance? or is it intelligent recommendations?

- are there any uses of "affordance" in new media domain(possibly yes)? are there any considerations of affordance in design phases of interfaces in responsive environments( or mixed reality environments)?
- how can afforfance concept fit recent interface paradigms (invisibility, multimodality, natural interaction)?and new forms of interaction?
- can one thing afford multiple actions for the same person? if so, is it a desirable thing or not?
- check moseumsquarties? >>> i could not figure out particularly which activity of them may relate our research study?
- investigate the use of affordances - good examples of affordance uses
- exs on the familiar and new artifacts.
- definitions of affordances in different domains and in new media.
- read ''Design of everyday things" by Norman and "Practice of everyday life" by Certeau in 2-3 weeks and make a summary and figure out possible connections among the two books and our potential research.

Wed 2008-10-15

Summary - 6

subscribe related rss feeds
read "Practice of Everyday Life" by Certeau
think concept of unfamiliarity, when the things become unfamiliar with respect to breakdowns
methods to increase the efficience of collobarative practices, importance of feedback in communication
levels of interpretation, between human-to-human comm
- how many layers? more layers better?
- how many lenses to interpret,
- how and in what ways mediums and layers of communication affect communication?
- check autopoiesis by Varela, interference and compensation
where is the orchestra?
- power relations, hierarchy, who controls?
ask for "why"
investigate Damasio and Ishii
think about the concepts uncanny valley, interestingness and novelty

Wed 2008-10-08

Summary - 5

check the game called spore
authorship ?? control of scenarios, supervision, preprogrammed world?? god game??
check the artworks dealing with the concepts drift, breakdown, disturbances, intervention, faulty behaviour, on the web -turbulence.org and networkedperformance
check the taxonomy and categorization of interfaces in HCI domain
read the paper by Eduardo Kac - negotiating meaning
read the paper by David Rokeby - transforming mirros
read Paul Dourish to become familiar with the ways of making scientific connections( as anchor)

Wed 24-09-08

Summary - 4

read book "reflexive methodology: new vistas for qualitative research" by alvesson mats
obtain a digital copy of processing book from Petra
write 500-750 words per week about the ideas & thoughts
before the meetings prepare an overview of subjects to be disscussed
finalize fridge bussiness
investigate conscious drift concept
go on current research study..

Wed 10-09-08

Summary - 3

talk with Rob about curious spaces project - partially done
read Marleu Ponty - will be read not now but not so far future
set milestones+schedule for the research -from now to the jury time!
practice based research formulation informally
research funding -ARC- look Petra's sample proposals
bumblebee 3D camera- will be available
read urban probes by Eric Paulos
read cultural probes by Bill Gaver
put link for liquid Diesel Hologram Show and find company
investigate
- Echo Tate united visual artists
- we make money not art website
- first referencebook skoldberg- i couldnot remember what is for this note???

yeap thats all for this meeting

Fri 05-09-08

Meeting Summary - 2

look processing book
names
- Anthony Gormley
- Ken Rinaldo
organize the research study as a combination of reading and practice!
read urban screens - ref???
investigate
- situationism
- familiar stranger
learn deadline for the prob. jury

[Tue, Aug 26, 2008]
summary 1
- I have sent an email to R. Hyde for participating the ARCF9001
- I will write a request letter for laptop with justification ( I guess we have about 2 weeks for that when the prices decrease)
- I will manage 3 research files (meeting summaries/diaries, literature summaries/quotes<- ->ideas&thoughts)
- We will meet generally weekly on Wednesdays after 2pm
- I have 2 articles (performing geog.s and the one from the observer ) and
2 books (Material Thinking and Terra Infirma) to read/investigate..
- You will send me an invitation for wiki pages

Agency Sensitive Design

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Saturday, December 18, 2010

Meeting Summaries