Welcome to the 2nd BAaST Workshop on Inbodied Interaction, CHI 2019 (1 day)
BAaST - that’s Body As a Starting Point. That starting point is for interactive technology design, and our question is: if we start designs that will touch bodies from an understanding of how those bodies operate (from macro processes like sleep to micro processes like hormonal signalling of metatonin) how might this knowledge inform/change our designs for health and wellbeing, for performance?
(year 1 workshop page here)
The following sections provide
an overview of the workshop rationale
Workshop Position Papers Invitation/DATES
Background: primer on inbodied interaction
Tl;dr - deadline is Feb 21
for 4 page CHI 2019 Extended Abstract Format
- invited in 1 of 3 categories outlined below,
for upload to provided link -scroll down
Introduction and Motivation
A growing area in HCI is the creation of tools to support health and performance. As the field moves in this domain, there is a meta-structural problem emerging; health is a holistic concept that requires an understanding of the many systems involved and their dynamic interactions, but the HCI community, at present, is producing technological artifacts that are largely fragmenting health and lack grounding in basic understanding of human physiology, neurology, etc. This fragmentation is compromising the field's ability to advance in this important domain. Of course, the challenge of holism of health is that it is far too complex for any one person or group to manage at present. How might we advance a new form of design that enables the emergence of more holistic tools and perspectives for advancing proactive and preventive health?
One emerging approach for advancing this problem is inbodied design. Inbodied design is an emerging area in HCI that focuses on using knowledge of the body’s internal systems and processes to better inform the design spaces appropriate for HCI. The inbodied design space acknowledges three plausible systems to be aware of including the internal workings of the body within the skin (inbodied), the actions and behaviors made by individuals (em-bodied), and, potentially, the microbiome and other contextual factors outside of the skin that impact health, which we label circum-bodied. When we view the in-, em-, and circum-bodied as a coherent system, we can design from a more holistic, grounded understanding of human performance.
The focus of this workshop is to build on our prior work from last year’s Body as a Starting Point Workshop in particular to explore how best to advance this work further and grow this community (just scroll down to previous post for last year’s plan),
How might we better account for inbodied systems when building tools that target em-bodied actions?
How can we, for instance, better understand that which is functioning circum-bodied?
Are there mappings between IOT, wearables, and particular aspects of this?
How do we build in such a way that technology artifacts can continually be advanced towards a more holistic perspective rather than foster further fragmentation and confusion?
These are the questions we seek to explore in this workshop.
To support this exploration, we are requesting papers of a variety of domains, including papers responsive to this introduction, even from authors with no prior engagement in inbodied design (scroll down for position paper spec and deadlines)
For those who participated in last year's workshop or core who are interested in engaging with prior materials, we also welcome papers proposing innovative solutions to address one of the specific design challenges described below
Our mission for this workshop is to have participants gain the practice and confidence to start using and exploring Inbodied interaction approaches in their own research and design practice. We build from the foundation we created in last year’s workshop where we introduced and explored Inbodied interaction concepts as interesting ideas. This year, participants will gain pragmatic experience with the in5 approaches that can be used to inform novel designs and support aspirations for performance. In this year’s workshop, we begin from the participants submissions that demonstrate their engagement with the in5 concepts to solve new problems presented in the design challenges. In these presentations and design jams, we will build and strengthen shared understandings of these ideas so that participants will have confidence in taking these ideas forward and applying them in their own work.
to recap Inbodied design – discussing what it can offer to HCI in the next wave of research.
To demonstrate the use of the in5 lenses to build novel applications that support aspirations for human performance.
to chart Inbodied design ideas to further develop and grow this emerging area in HCI.
to build a community by offering a cross domain online space to connect with others who are interested in this area.
Position Papers (due Feb 21)
The first workshop in 2018 introduced participants to in5 and explored design challenges developed at the time. This year, the one-day workshop will build on this foundation. We invite three types of position papers:
A: Open discussions on any aspect of Inbodied-centered design as outlined above (let us know which one you’re addressing),
B: imaginative design responses to design challenge, listed below, and
C: Roll Your Own in5 Design to explore one or two MEECS (move, eat, engage, cogitate, sleep) exploring a process vs problem approach, for instance, an n-of-1 approach to build a practice over time.
Examples of types of challenges that might be explored include these inspired from the workshop last year:
CHALLENGE ONE GPS has made way-finding increasingly passive. Yet studies show that actively practicing navigation, while in that physical environment, results in the involved areas of the brain physically growing. This development may be an aid against cognitive decline. How can MEECS be leveraged in interactive designs to help leverage skill building for more active way finding, – especially for those who may be directionally challenged with or without GPS.
CHALLENGE TWO: Introverts have a hard time making small talk; extroverts have a hard time listening. Oxytoxin is a hormone that triggers trust; endorphins create a sense of happiness or even euphoria. How might we use Movement with ENGAGE in an interactive tech design to help us practice better social engagement?
CHALLENGE THREE Rich engagement with diverse bacteria in the environment, from food to forests to farm animals seem to connect with better physical and mental health. How design a movement support app that also helps connect with this bacterial diversity?
Last year, we framed our workshop design challenges by asking participants to design tools and applications to “solve” a design challenge. This year, we are particularly interested in exploring in5-oriented designs that, rather than presume a single solution, instead explore possibilities for individuals to dial in their personal in5 to support a particular challenge. Since this dialling in or tuning will be different for each individual, one approach to explore is the self-experimentation and associated self-reflection of n-of-1 approaches. WHile not required in any submission, we are particularly interested in how participants may use this approach to frame their explorations. The following video gives an example of an experimental approach to explore inbodied health practices.
Participants’ papers will be linked from this site after the deadline so that participants can read each other’s’ work prior the workshop.
At the workshop, similar to a Design Jam, we will collaboratively iterate on proposals by exploring strengths and opportunities from an Inbodied perspective.
SPEC for Position Paper Format
Please use the nice new Extended Abstract Format for CHI2019
No more that 4 pages of text - and no more than 1 page of refs (5 total pages)
Deadlines for submittion are Feb 21; you’ll hear back from us by Feb 28.
Please upload your entry by following the below link:https://www.dropbox.com/request/0zClQveoyW6IzLiPhkvF
Plan for the Day
Our goal is to build collaboration teams that carry the challenges towards a shared research project and publication. The day will close with a working session towards synthesizing the workshop insights for incorporation into an in5 framework for future publication. The workshop will have four key sections: 1) In5 review, 2) Design Challenges Part 1, 3) Design Challenges Part 2, and 4) FrameWork Workshopping.
Introductions and recap on
inbodied design In5: Move, Eat, Engage, Cogitate, Sleep.
Concept Position and Design Challenge work Part 1
Concept Position and Design Challenge work Part 2
Pulling it together: FrameWork Workshopping from the day
Next steps for community building and research collaborations
Post-Workshop
4:30 – 6:30
Networking and discussion over drinks & dinner
A bit more Background: Inbodied Five Quick Overview
The state of the body (of which the brain is a part) affects all aspects of our performance. By performance we mean cognitive, social, physical and so on. A core model of Inbodied interaction is in5 (for “Inbodied five”). The in5 lenses are Move, Eat, Engage, Cogitate, Sleep. As presented last year, these five processes are fundamental to our quality of life. They are also processes that each of us engage in daily, and the quality of that engagement affects our wellbeing. For example, we all eat: however, the quality and amount of what we eat, and even how we eat (with others; alone) affects our wellbeing.
These fundamental processes also provide functional ways to view the more formally defined 11 internal systems that keep us alive (endocrine, reproduction, integumentary, immune, skeletal, respiratory, muscular, digestive, urinary, cardiovascular, nervous). Each of the in5 lens engages with each of the 11 internal systems to varying degrees. By leveraging the in5 for interactive designs, we can open the design space to offer multiple paths to a similar objective for anyone interested in improving their quality of life – that is – their human performance.
Building from this focus of how internal systems inform all our embodied (mediated through the body) actions, Inbodied interaction design encourages us to ask how designing to engage these processes deliberately can support our aspirations for performance. For instance, if our aspiration is to improve cognitive performance, in5 gives us a way to achieve this aspiration by considering of any one, or combination, of the in5 lenses (e.g., movement drives processes to support sleep, and in turn, enhanced sleep affects endocrine and nervous responses for taking in and processing information).
Likewise, in5 enables us to “start anywhere” for success. For instance, if one’s goal is to become more active, or “get ripped”, it may be easiest to begin this journey by first adding an hour to one’s sleep several nights a week for a time, and then – being better recovered – one has resource to move more.
The workshop will both review these concepts, and apply them in designs, as described in the submission and workshop plans, below.
Circum-bodied: What are the In/Em Boundaries?
With the in5 model, an interaction framing within Inbodied interaction is the concept we proposed last year of circumbodied. While embodied frames the body as the key mediator of our interactions with the world, and inbodied focuses on the specifics of the internal processes to enable and effect the state of that embodiment, circumbodied asks us to reflect on the boundary of in and em themselves. More particularly, it asks “what is not inside”?
The concept of circumbodied is exploratory: it is informed by a growing body of research exploring the role of the microbes that live on and in us (our microbiota) that outnumber our human cells by more than 200 to 1. The related concept of microbiome refers specifically to the genetic makeup of the microbes in and on us and factors such as what we eat, where we live, and for how long we have lived there all have considerable effect on the health of our microbiome. Microbiomic health is reflected by the presence of a diverse set of microbial life, and since our human microbiome appears to be tied to our environment microbiota, In5 practices may be further informed by a circumbodied view. For instance, exploring movement through a circumbodied lens may privilege ways to connect a person to a more diverse microbiomic environment than a gym at least once a week. The workshop will let us explore these kinds of design vectors
We look forward to reading your papers and meeting you in Glasgow
Josh Andres, IBM, Australia
m.c. schraefel, WellthLab, U of Southampton, UK
Erik Hekler, Health Design Lab, UCSD, USA
Inbodied Interaction is part of a series of activities within the GetAMoveOn ESPRC Health+ Network - join us, eh?
