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Traces as an Approach to Design for Focal Things and Practices

Published: 23 October 2016 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents a novel way of using traces---not as indicators of skillfulness, aging, or evidence of interactions with technological tangible objects. Instead we propose traces as a design approach to reframe technologies in their socio-ecological context: where people, practices, and materials maintain a constant dialogue with one another. Contemporary technologies tend to disengage people from this context and the task the technology performs. This predicament has been referred to as "the device paradigm;" the resolution to which is in illuminating the technology's context by shaping them as "focal things and practices" (FT&P). This paper theorizes how design can frame technologies as FT&P. It takes the position that all three elements of the socio-ecological context (people, practices, and materials) can be linked together with traces. A design exploration, and the resulting research artifacts, theorize the argumentation of this paper and how traces can be used to support technologies as FT&P.

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  • (2024)On the Role of Materials Experience for Novel Interactions with Digital Representations of Historical Pop-up and Movable BooksProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642142(1-18)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Point of no Undo: Irreversible Interactions as a Design StrategyProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581433(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Conformal, Seamless, Sustainable: Multimorphic Textile-forms as a Material-Driven Design Approach for HCIProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581156(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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    NordiCHI '16: Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
    October 2016
    1045 pages
    ISBN:9781450347631
    DOI:10.1145/2971485
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Published: 23 October 2016

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    Author Tags

    1. Traces
    2. device paradigm
    3. focal things and practices
    4. interaction design
    5. socio-ecology

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    NordiCHI '16

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    NordiCHI '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 58 of 231 submissions, 25%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 379 of 1,572 submissions, 24%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)On the Role of Materials Experience for Novel Interactions with Digital Representations of Historical Pop-up and Movable BooksProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642142(1-18)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2023)Point of no Undo: Irreversible Interactions as a Design StrategyProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581433(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2023)Conformal, Seamless, Sustainable: Multimorphic Textile-forms as a Material-Driven Design Approach for HCIProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581156(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2022)A Touch of Realities: Car-Interior-Based Haptic Interaction Supports In-Car VR Recovery from InterruptionsProceedings of Mensch und Computer 202210.1145/3543758.3543768(229-239)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2022
    • (2022)Flavorium: An Exploration of Flavobacteria’s Living Aesthetics for Living Color InterfacesProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517713(1-19)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
    • (2022)Weaving Stories: Toward Repertoires for Designing ThingsProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3501901(1-21)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
    • (2022)Spicing It Up: From Ubiquitous Devices to Tangible Things Through ProvocationProceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3490149.3502257(1-15)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2022
    • (2022)“What a Mess!”: Traces of Use to Increase Asynchronous Social Presence in Shared Virtual Environments2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)10.1109/VRW55335.2022.00150(598-599)Online publication date: Mar-2022
    • (2022)Traces in Virtual Environments: A Framework and Exploration to Conceptualize the Design of Social Virtual EnvironmentsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2022.320309228:11(3874-3884)Online publication date: Nov-2022
    • (2018)Designing Places for ReflectionSocial Internet of Things10.1007/978-3-319-94659-7_6(107-120)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2018

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