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Multi-field inputs are techniques driven by multiple short-range RFID-enabled artifacts like RFID-tags and RFID-tag readers. The technology is useful for designers so as to enable the construction of advanced interaction through the physical world. To take advantage of such opportunities, it is important to understand the technology in terms of what interactions it might offer designers. Read »
Short-Range Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an emerging technology that interaction designers are currently embracing. There are, however, few systematic efforts to utilize the technology as a tool for the development of new design concepts. This article focuses on technology as a design material and its role in the formative process of conceptual design. Read »
The term ‘unreal estate’ is coined to refer to online mediations of projected and planned urban developments, especially luxury domestic residency. A related website is studied as a mediation of co-ordinated artifacts and assembled persuasion. The site is also examined as a mediating artifact through which multiple representations are co-articulated. Read »
‘Design matters’ is interpreted in this exploratory paper via a narrative pastiche that concerns recent developments in ubiquitous computing and their implications for emerging techno-material culture. The article has two research aims: 1) to connect discourses on ubicomp with ones on design fiction, and 2) to motivate design research to expand styles of playful, reflective and interpretative modes, and genres of research writing. Read »
Based on experiences from practical design work, we try to show, what we believe, are the similarities and differences, between composing music for interactive media compared to linear music. In our view, much is the same, built on traditions that have been around for centuries within music and composition. The fact that the composer writes programming code is an essential difference. Read »
Staging is the creative act of showing something to an audience. When staging, the artist chooses and creates the context, situation and structure of the presented object, play or installation. The chosen context and situation provide background for the audience interpretations. Meaning is co-created between the artist and audience, based on the cultural and individual understanding of the context and situation. Read »
Montage in cinema means to mount images and sounds from different sources, that are interpreted together and whose oppositions drive the story further. In this paper we develop the montage concept further for co-creation in interactive, tactile, spatial cross-media. As case we use the design of the interactive, tangible, cross-media installation ORFI. Read »
In this paper we present our ongoing research on designing smart textile solutions for musical tangibles, what we call co-creative tangibles. Our textile, musical tangibles shall be used to improve health and wellbeing for children with severe disabilities and their families, in their homes. We use theories from the Music and Health field as a framework, both for the design process and the design related user evaluations. Read »
The traditional role of the musical instrument is to be the working tool of the professional musician. On the instrument the musician performs music for the audience to listen to. In this paper we present an interactive installation, where we expand the role of the instrument to motivate musicking and co-creation between diverse users. We have made an open installation, where users can perform a variety of actions in several situations. Read »
In this paper we present some of the challenges we approached in order to design and develop interactive experience environments in textile. Our interactive environments are created to facilitate communication on equal terms through music, between children with severe disabilities and their families. We call these environments “fields” because of their openness towards many interpretations, interaction forms and activity levels. Read »
There is a growing interest among scholars, practitioners and organizations as to how design may benefit management, particularly when this happens in a service context. In this exploratory qualitative study, I investigate such a multi-disciplinary intersection with the aim of better understanding how service design may be of value for leaders in service organizations on a strategic level. Read »
This article is about the role of film in interaction and product design research with technology, and the use of film in exploring and explaining emerging technologies in multiple contexts. We have engaged in a reflective design research process that uses graphical, audiovisual, and time-based media as a tool, a material and a communicative artefact that enables us to approach complex, obscure and often invisible emerging technologies. Read »
This article describes processes connected to Ergonomics in design and Systems Oriented Design and how these two lines of thought in design might be related. Doing this we aim at suggesting a more holistic approach and a better understanding of the notion of Ergonomics in Systems Oriented Design. Read »
The main approach of this paper is to look at design research from a systems-oriented perspective. This implies that design research is understood as a dynamic and emergent field of interrelated or contradicting thoughts, concepts and ideas. The first three sections of this paper draw cross-sections into the emerging richness in design research as it matures as a genuine mode of knowledge production. Read »
This paper introduces and discusses a Rich Research Space as an inclusive methodological framework and scaffold for research-by-design. The Rich Research Space especially addresses the issue of richness in design processes and design-led research. Read »
This paper introduces a new perspective on systems thinking in design related to sus- tainability. We argue that designers need to look at sustainability in an integrated man- ner where technical, economical and social aspects are embedded in an ecological ho- listic view. Sustainability is not just another requirement in the design process but needs to form the foundation for all design work. Read »
Designers and design is facing ever growing challenges from an increasingly complex world. Making design matter means to cope with these challenges and to be able to enter new important design fields where design can play a crucial role. To achieve this we need to become better at coping with super-complexity. Read »
Wikis represent flexible tools functioning as open-ended environments for collaboration while also offering process and group writing support. Here we focus on a project to innovate the use of wikis for collaborative writing within student groups in a final-year undergraduate political science course. Read »
Short-range Radio Frequency IDentification (SR-RFID) technology embedded in mobile phones offers interaction design practitioners the potential to design new forms of mobile experiences. The article presents a design oriented research study that seeks to develop affordances specifically in support of such practice. To do so the authors draw on Activity Theory. Read »
Research by Design is the theme of this first special guest edited issue of FORMakademisk. In this issue we look into a growing domain of design research that takes up relations between practice and theory that are pertinent for inquiry in the interdisciplinary approaches and frameworks that are often central to research in design (Rust et al. 2005). Read »
This article takes up the concept of performativity prevalent in the humanities and applies it to the design of installation arts in mixed reality mode. Based on the design, development and public access to two specific works, the concept is related to a form of research by design. Read »
We inquire into how visual signage may make aspects of ubiquitous computing technologies visible and how digital tools and platforms impact that visual design and semiosis. We explore how visual interfaces have been designed and mediated within a design-research project that looked at technologies for mediating between digital media and the physical environment. Read »
Expressive mobile narratives are in the early stages of design and participative formation. We ask what relations and articulations can be brought to play in the design and enactment of a mobile fictional space in which identity is a core motivation and design feature. Through a design case, we share experiences in the building and trial process of an experimental, mobile “social fiction” called NarraHand. Read »
Digital artefacts pervade culture and social life in work, play and leisure. Many of these activities are carried out through screen-based interfaces, which therefore take on an important role in enabling and engaging people in their daily life. Screen-based visual movement is increasingly a key characteristic of mobile phones, gaming platforms, operating systems and websites. Read »
Screen-based user interfaces now include dynamic and moving elements that transform the screen space and relations of mediated content. These changes place new demands on design as well as on our reading and use of such multimodal texts. Assuming a socio-cultural perspective on design, we discuss in this article the use of animation and visual motion in interface navigation as navimation. Read »
It is now possible to include complex visual movement in screen interfaces, including those that enable web browsing on different media devices. This article investigates the potential for employing movement in web browsing – or more specifically, how motional form may be connected to interface actions. The investigation is carried out through design experimentation. Read »
This article takes up the relations between products, people, and the Internet. Our investigation is set in the context of the emergence of networked and service-driven physical products. The article builds upon the curation and design of an exhibition that pulls together recent hybrids composed of physical objects as well as digital things and networked services. Read »
‘Desktop’ social networking services are migrating to mobile devices. Research into the design of mobile social software (MoSoSo), especially its communication design, is emerging. The case we present is from a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project into communicative design innovation concerning these technologies. Read »