Towards understanding the design of bodily integration

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102643Get rights and content

Highlights

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    “Bodily integration” results from a tight coupling between computing machinery and human body

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    Presents design space and associated user experiences of bodily integration

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    Presents strategies for the design of bodily integration systems

Abstract

In the field of human-computer interaction, the term “integration” describes an emergent paradigm in which the human and the computer are tightly coupled. Our previous research has contributed to this paradigm through the design of “bodily integrated” systems, where the human body and the computing machinery are coupled in a way that allows bidirectional actuation. In this article, we build on this design research: we identify gaps in knowledge regarding bodily integration design and propose, in response, two key dimensions along which bodily integration systems can be categorized: bodily agency and bodily ownership. Conceiving each dimension from low to high allows us to define a four-quadrant design space that highlights key user experiences of bodily integration: Super-Body, Tele-Body, Chauffeured-Body, and Possessed-Body. We demonstrate how this design space can be used to analyze bodily integration design using three of our own bodily integration systems as illustrative examples. We also identify seven design strategies for interaction designers to design future bodily integration systems: turn-taking, safety, ease-in, movement, sensations & perceptions, personalization, and bystanders. Ultimately, we hope to advance the emergent integration paradigm through a body-centric design perspective.

Section snippets

Bodily integration

The term “integration” is increasingly used to describe an emergent paradigm in HCI in which the human and the computer are tightly coupled (Mueller, Lopes, et al., 2020). Farooq and Grudin (2016) characterize this change as a transition from the computer working for the user to with the user. They point out, as an example, how voice assistants have gone beyond taking orders (Human: “Wake me up at 7 am”) to working with humans (Assistant: “It is 6:40 am. You should get up now because bad

Related work

The research presented in this article was inspired by prior work concerning the design of bodily integration systems. These works describe opportunities to extend the human body through computational machinery, and specific uses of physical actuators that directly interact with the body. Despite the existing initial explorations, the approaches outlined in these works do not readily provide a complete answer on how to design bodily integration. Hence, our work is still needed.

As early as the

Developing the design space

We investigated the design space by reviewing existing example systems, assembling three case studies, reflecting on the case studies, and in-person meetings with experts in actuation systems. We present an overview of the development process of the design space in Fig. 1.

We started from a review of existing example systems, assembled following prior work by Marshall et al. (Marshall et al., 2011) who collected systems where users experience limited control over their body. This review was

Bodily Integration

Based on our own prior work and the extended literature, we argue that it can be helpful to examine bodily agency and ownership to understand the user experience of bodily integration systems. Both agency and ownership are concerned with a coupling between human body and computing machinery, but from different angles: bodily agency in terms of “who is controlling whom”, and bodily ownership in terms of “that is me”.

Prior work has highlighted the importance of control in understanding embodied

The bodily integration design space

Combining the bodily agency and bodily ownership dimensions produces the bodily integration design space (Figure 2).

We argue that designers should consider both, bodily agency and ownership, in the design of bodily integrated systems. Prior work in psychology points out that both can play an important role (Blanke & Metzinger, 2009) in any self-experience (Braun et al., 2018), which we argue includes bodily integrated experiences. We acknowledge that prior work has highlighted that the

Four user experiences based on the design space's quadrants

The design space enables designers to identify the quadrant for which they are designing, which can help adapt the design process (Figure 3).

The following sections describe the opportunities and challenges designers might face when designing for each quadrant, summarized below (Table 1).

Applying the bodily integration Design Space

This section describes how our bodily integration design space with its four quadrants can be applied to existing design examples to demonstrate the framework's usefulness for design practice. Our three systems support various application domains and employ different technologies, showcasing the general applicability of the framework.

We begin with a summary of the three systems (Table 2).

Design Strategies for Bodily Integrated Systems based on bodily agency and ownership

While the design space can be used to determine the “What?” of the design process, we must also consider the “How?”. We now present a set of strategies for consideration by designers interested in developing bodily integrated systems. We base these strategies on our experiences of designing, developing, trialing, and widely exhibiting bodily integrated systems. Furthermore, we also base these strategies on our experiences of conducting associated studies. Combining our research and practice

Discussion

Our framework around bodily integration has helped us in analyzing existing designs we have developed in our respective labs. By looking at the design space, we have determined where many existing systems sit and where we could “move” them to in the design space to facilitate different user experiences. The design space dimensions have helped to discuss our designs, providing a way to articulate design differences. We hope other designers and researchers will benefit from this work.

We

Conclusion

Our work was motivated by the potential for human-computer integration fostered by contemporary technological advances, particularly those in which the human and the computing machinery are coupled in a way that allows them to act on each other physically. We believe that an integration approach can facilitate novel user experiences, and in particular, that bodily integration can offer exciting new opportunities for users to experience their body, and hence themselves, in interesting new ways.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration. Pedro Lopes: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Josh Andres: Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Richard Byrne: Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Nathan Semertzidis: Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Zhuying Li: Investigation,

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller thanks the Australian Research Council for their support. Pedro Lopes acknowledges the support in part by NSF grant 2047189. Richard Byrne, Josh Andres, Nathan Semertzidis and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller thank RMIT University's School of Design. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agencies.

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